Spurgeon Manor Retirement Center

Located in Dallas Center, IA

For Spurgeon Manor Retirement Center owners, maintaining resident dignity, restoring self-care abilities, and promoting independent decision making are their primary goals. They wanted a more efficient and home-like environment for their residents. They needed solutions to the existing building’s space challenges:

There was a shortage of and inadequate-sized skilled nursing beds.
The main kitchen was too small, inconveniently located and had other deficiencies.
Dedicated service/delivery dock and trash areas were needed.
The shuttle bus garage was too small.
Parking was scarce and approximately 40 additional stalls were needed.

A 19,000 SF addition allowed for two new 16-bed “neighborhoods” or units of skilled nursing beds. One unit was designated as a secured unit to help monitor and protect dementia patients; the other was for Intermediate Care Facility beds. Some semi-private Intermediate Care Facility (ICF) rooms in the existing space were converted to private rooms. A small, home-like kitchen and dining area was incorporated into each neighborhood.

The original, main kitchen was once centralized, but with this and a previous addition, it was becoming too remote from the areas it needed to serve. Maintaining operations while enlarging the old kitchen in-place would have been difficult. Building a new 3,500-square-foot kitchen as an addition to the north side of the building recentralized its services, resolved the issue of interrupted operations during construction, and allowed for efficient and unobtrusive site placement of the new bus garage, service dock and trash containers.

A 43-stall parking lot that included two accessible stalls was added to the south of the new addition. Other site components of the project included a naturalized storm water detention area and rerouting of existing water and sanitary mains. An inviting interior courtyard area contains a walking loop, seating areas, fountain, accent night lighting and future arbor space.

Different from facilities of the past, the addition at Spurgeon Manor is designed to look and feel like a large home rather than a medical ward. At its center are skilled nursing assistants who manage resident care with support from nurses and therapists – a reversal of the traditional nursing home model. Here, residents receive individualized care in self-contained neighborhoods where small groupings of residential rooms are located around a hearth area with a living room, dining room and kitchen.