Among the many projects set forth in Roadmap 2020, two of the biggest are new skilled nursing facilities on both campuses. These have entered a key step on their way to breaking ground: The preliminary design plans have been completed, and submitted to California’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development for review. The timeline for state approvals is fluid, typically involving at least several rounds of revisions. But all goes as anticipated, construction could begin on both campuses as early as this year.
Both centers are planned around best-practice “neighborhood” models. They’ll feature groupings of private rooms with their own baths and showers, anchored around communal kitchen, living, and dining rooms. Besides creating a more comfortable and lively setting, a major feature of this model is flexibility: Spaces can be used interchangeably for short term rehab, memory care, long term care, or assisted living.
The Union City facility will hold 96 beds, and be a state-of-the-art replacement to the existing Lorber building. The Covina facility, which will hold 32 beds, will introduce skilled nursing and memory care services to that campus for the first time. Once its doors are opened, members and spouses will no longer have to leave the community to get these levels of care elsewhere.
Both centers aim to create a personal, homelike environment, distinguishing modern care communities from the institutional feel of older designs. This modern, neighborhood model emphasizes dignity, and well-being – in line with what the Masonic Homes has embodied since its doors opened in 1898. In this way and many others, Roadmap 2020 leads the Homes into the future while preserving its long-time philosophy: successful aging, built on a foundation of fraternal values.