Plant Home pauses project

BATH

After months and years of planning, a Plant Home expansion initially scheduled to break ground this spring has been put on hold so the organization can conduct another market analysis.

The expansion of triplexes and a 48,000- square-foot building was designed to help stop the bleeding of the Plant Home’s endowment. The decision to stall construction is one that has caused much heartache for administrators, said Don Capoldo, the Plant Home’s executive director. But after crunching numbers, they and board members have all agreed it is a necessary cost the organization must pay to make certain the market can support the planned $10 million, 45-unit expansion.

After getting site plan approval and contract rezoning approved by the city, the Plant Home had planned to be breaking ground in a matter of weeks. However, Capoldo told The Times Record the organization is pausing and will go out to bid to have a mar- ket study done, which should take about three weeks.

The Planning Board recently extended the site plan approval six months for the project, making it good until November. Andrew Deci, Bath’s director of planning and development, said the Plant Home can apply for another extension provided the ordinances don’t change substantively.

“I think from a staff level we’re very supportive of their expansion plans; we want to see them succeed,” Deci said. And if the Plant Home wants to make adjustments to the plan, “we’ll be supportive of that.” He added “It’s a very good thing if their project progresses.”

Capoldo said he was hired about 10 years ago and heard about the position from a friend while on the road to interview for several other jobs in Maine. Formerly a “hatchet” man who used to make a lot of money for his employers going into facilities like this, he’d had a change of heart after his daughter died and was looking for a change. When he got to the Plant Home and saw the logo he knew he was home. His daughter’s charity logo was a dove flying away from a tower and here was a bird flying to a lighthouse.

But from the start he said he knew there needed to be expansion and it was time to get the house in order. The Plant Home received an initial gift of $440,000 from Thomas Plant to start the nonprofit’s endowment with the mission to provide care and assisted living services to the elderly regardless of their ability to pay. There are 37 private assisted-living apartments in the Plant Home and 11 other apartments on the 30-acre campus.

When he was hired, Capoldo said Plant Home investors wanted the board to bring in a professional administrator to create policy and procedure and oversee the change in spending, and it was “with the understanding that the endowment was not going to last forever; we knew it.” They were able to get the annual draw on the endowment down from $600,000 to just over $300,000, and “we’ve done anything we could internally to stop the bleeding of the endowment.” However, they know it can’t get down to zero dollars currently and “to raise $300,000 a year is not easy for anyone.”

In 2002, the board of directors at the Plant Home decided to apply for and received tax credit financing for an expansion and a renovation. The home was about 90 years old at the time and needed a face lift. But instead of a mix of people both with and without money as in past years, “the people coming in just had no money,” Capoldo said. “We went from having 22 to 37 apartments; 32 of them were low-income housing apartments. So the benefit was we got a nice, beautiful new unit with single, all private apartments, private baths, private kitchens, great waterfront views. The downside is you have added 15 more apartments for people who could not afford to pay for them — the services, the health care.”

Thomas Plant said when he opened the home in 1917 “those who have lived honest and industrial lives and are without means or friends to care for them, have earned the right to be cared for,” Capoldo said. “It’s been that way for 100 years. We’re not going to provide care that’s not dignified. It’s that simple. There is no way sharing a room with a stranger when you’re 85 or 90 is dignified.”

However, 32 low-income units to five paid units is a bad mix, “no mistake about it,” Capoldo said. “The endowment could only go one way if you didn’t change your mix of people who could pay and couldn’t pay.” And after the 2008 market crash, “there was no question we needed to expand.”

Years in the making, design and architect plans are ready to go to bid within two weeks notice if the market study shows the numbers work, and Capoldo said the project likely wouldn’t go out to bid until winter when construction prices are lower. In the meantime, the Plant Home can work on its marketing plan and fundraising.

The expansion project would be funded through USDA Rural Development Community Facility Program loans worth $10 million, as well as Androscoggin Bank. Waiting a bit longer also allows the Plant Home to reach the end of its 10-year relationship with its low-income tax credit financing partners, allowing it to put the home’s equity toward reducing the debt service.

The initial market study showed the proposed new beds would be sustainable but Capoldo said in the last few months the city of Bath has announced the sale of the Huse School to buyers who say they want to use it for assisted living and the former hospital may have senior housing. Assisted living is also being eyed at Brunswick Landing, and within 25 miles of Bath Capoldo said he has a colleague looking at doing an expansion of a senior home. Given these elements, Plant Home administration and the board knew another market study was needed, which will also look at the absorption rate. If it takes 22 to 24 months to fill the units instead of 18, that’s another six months with no additional revenue.

Capoldo said he is confident the project will go forward but said he and the board, as stewards of money that is not theirs, have to check their math and just wants more data first. The Plant Home will be reaching out to the community for help in carrying on Plant’s vision. It will be hosting the kickoff chicken barbecue during Bath Heritage Days and plans to be working with other like-minded charities as well to get their names out.

To raise what they need, Capoldo said, “I would rather have $7 from everybody who lives in Bath because that means everybody in Bath has heard about it and that makes them a part of this, that they have buy in; than get four people to give me $15,000 apiece for these things that we have to do.”

Additionally, “We want to reach out and hear the stories of people whose families who have lived here before,” Capoldo said, noting his email is on the Plant Home website. “This is going to be fun.”

dmoore@timesrecord.com

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