BATH

In a ceremony Monday, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D- 1st District, and Virginia Manuel, an official from the USDA’s office of Rural Development, will be on hand to celebrate the Plant Memorial Home’s successful bid to expand its assisted-living facility at 1 Washington St.

The City Council two weeks ago gave final approval to the Plant Home’s construction of a 50,000- square-foot addition with 45 units of senior housing, more than doubling the facility’s current capacity.

Pingree and Manuel will join Plant Home Executive Director Don Capaldo and Plant Home residents on Monday at 10 a.m. The public is welcome to attend.

The $9.2 million facelift will be added to the southeast portion of the Washington Street facility that currently has 48 private apartments — 37 of which are assisted living — in a home founded in 1917 by philanthropist Thomas Plant.

The Plant Home expansion, when completed, will create an estimated 20 permanent positions, not including construction jobs; add more than $1 million into the local economy through the purchase of food, insurance, health care products, fuel and other goods and services, and additional salaries; offer elder housing and health care opportunities in a state that is aging; save 37 elderly infirmed residents from being relocated; prevent 37 additional elders from entering MaineCare; and save 26 existing jobs at the Plant Home from elimination, Capoldo told The Times Record earlier this year.

Advertisement

Administrators say the Plant Home is one of a very few in the country that financially backs private, assisted-living apartments for Medicaid-eligible people.

Each year, the Plant Home takes in about $70,000 in charitable donations. The average income of residents, Capoldo said, is $9,980.

“Every day, someone runs out of money,” Capoldo said. “We don’t kick anybody out.”

The Plant Home modified its construction plan to address concerns of neighbors. The addition will be built on a smaller footprint, but taller than first planned.

Architects will attempt to comply with the Colonial style of the Plant Home and the neighborhood as they design the building.

Thomas Plant purchased 30 acres at the southern end of Washington Street in 1916 and endowed the home with his own funds. It opened Oct. 1, 1917.

Plant placed on the wall an inscription that still hangs there today:

“This home is founded on my sincere belief that those who have lived honest, industrious lives and are without means or friends to care for them, have earned the right to be cared for. Only through the labor and expenditures of others is it possible …”



Comments are not available on this story.

filed under: