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SAVOY — When John Ponthie first heard about Champaign County’s shortage of skilled-nursing beds — which is estimated to be about 310, advocates say — he didn’t believe it.
“That can’t be the numbers,” the CEO of Fayprop LLC and owner of Southern Administrative Services told a colleague after getting off the phone with local grassroots organization Advocates for Aging Care.
However, Ponthie learned that the statistic wasn’t an exaggeration, which was one of the reasons he decided to join forces with the local group to develop a new skilled-nursing facility in Savoy.
“I’ve never seen a metropolitan area with such few nursing homes — and if I may, all one-star nursing homes,” he said. “This project is as needed as anything I’ve ever seen in my professional career.”
Ponthie was one of more than 25 people who voiced their support for the project at a public hearing Tuesday afternoon.
The session, hosted by staff from the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board at the Savoy Municipal Building, was well-attended, with about 50 people crammed into the village boardroom and about 30 more watching from the lobby.
Those who spoke came from a mix of sectors, including local government officials, healthcare professionals, education stakeholders, state legislators and community members who have faced challenges with finding care for their loved ones.
Ponthie said he is constantly getting phone calls from people who want to build new nursing homes in their communities.
“Unfortunately, almost always I say no, because there just isn’t the necessary support to do that in most communities,” he said. “I am here because of the folks in this room, which are some of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met.
“And quite frankly, I’m scared not to be here,” he joked. “They terrify me. I have never met a more organized, intelligent, passionate group in all of my years (of) doing this.”
He added that Advocates for Aging Care’s members “have made such an impression on me that I have offered to finance this project.”
Advocates for Aging Care and developer Fayprop LLC’s proposed $26.6 million project would include 120 beds and be located on 10 acres near the northeast corner of West Church Street and South Mattis Avenue, partners wrote in an application to the state.
The concept features 10 “home-like cottages in a campus residential setting.” Each cottage would include 12 units — with each unit having its own private room and bathroom — and common spaces such as a group dining area, a living area and outdoor space.
Two of the cottages would be located near each other with a “rehabilitation area” in between, providing therapy to residents who require rehabilitation services.
Advocates for Aging Care plans to be the nonprofit operator for the facility and contract Southern Administrative Services to manage the facility, which has been named The Cottages, according to a previous interview with Advocates for Aging Care committee chair Cathy Emanuel.
Plans also include working with AgingIN, where Ponthie is on the board of directors, to implement the Green House model.
In addition to the cottage housing style, the approach involves employing certified nursing assistants as “universal workers” who provide personalized care to residents and handle a variety of tasks, the project application stated.
“At the state level, we have worked to create the policy framework needed to support this innovative model,” state Sen. Paul Faraci, D-Champaign, said during the public hearing. “This year, I joined my legislative colleagues in advancing legislation that established, establishes this cottage-style nursing-home model, sets standards for staffing in facilities, and provides appropriate Medicaid reimbursement to help ensure that these beds remain financially sustainable and accessible to those residents who need it most.”
Faraci also noted that in addition to $500,000 allocated to the project in last year’s state budget, he’s been able to secure another $500,000 in this year’s budget for a total of $1 million.
State Rep. Brandun Schweizer, R-Danville, also voiced his support for the project, and Jacqueline Kalipeni, community outreach and engagement manager for state Rep. Carol Ammons, D-Urbana, said that Ammons is also in favor of the facility.
Multiple speakers detailed their challenges with finding skilled nursing care for their loved ones, such as struggling with long drives to visit family members placed in homes outside the county.
Others said that they have been able to secure local skilled care but found the quality of that care to be severely lacking.
A search of nursing homes with rehab services on Medicare.gov only turns up three facilities in the Champaign-Urbana area, each rated at one star out of five. Two have been cited for potential abuse. The next-closest option is an approximately 20-mile trek to the three-star Country Health nursing home in Gifford.
Tanya Koshy said her father lives at a skilled-nursing facility in Urbana, and she showed up at the public hearing “because I want something better for him and for every family in this county who ends up in the same situation.”
When her family could no longer provide care for her father at home, she found that the local and regional options were “bleak.”
“This is a market with no competition and no pressure to improve,” Koshy said. “Families don’t have a choice, and you take what you can get.”
She added that having a new skilled-nursing home would provide her father and others with “a real option” while also giving existing facilities in the county “a reason to do better.”
Koshy’s sentiments were echoed by Michele Olsen, whose late husband, Gary, was a local architect and very involved in the community.
When he developed Alzheimer’s, it came as a shock to her.
“He had a stroke,” Olsen said. “He got COVID. He couldn’t walk. He could not, he was unable to talk, this wonderful, storytelling, amazing man. I tried to find a safe place for him. He ended up in one of those one-star places.”
She later moved him to another facility before eventually turning to the Piatt County Nursing Home.
The facility wasn’t “pretty” and the drive wasn’t ideal, but it had “a caring staff that sticks around,” she said.
Olsen added that it will be important to ensure that the new nursing home is properly staffed and funded so that patients get the care and attention they need.
“He did not deserve this,” she said of her husband’s care locally. “He gave so much to this community. … He died with dignity, but he did not deserve the care that Champaign County afforded him.”
All written comments on the proposed nursing home must be received by July 1, state officials said.
Review board staff will post their findings on the project in a report, which will be posted online July 7. Comments in response to these findings must be received before 9 a.m. July 13.
The state review board is tentatively scheduled to review the proposed project on July 21.
More information is available at hfsrb.illinois.gov.
Emanuel said in a previous interview that she hopes to break ground in early fall if a certificate-of-need permit is approved in July and have the facility open by the first quarter of 2028.