The Orange County Legislature is contracting with a Minnesota-based senior care consulting firm to develop a master plan for a continuing care campus at Valley View.
On March 7, the Legislature authorized Chairwoman Katherine Bonelli to enter into a contract with Health Dimensions Group that will cost the county about $139,000.
The master plan contract marked a major milestone in the multi-year journey to enhance the value of the sole county-owned nursing home property, County Legislator and Valley View Advisory Committee Chairperson Michael Amo said at the meeting.
“We have been working on this project for five years,” he said before the vote on the contract. “In that five-year range, we have been trying to figure out [what we can do] to help the residents of Orange County age in place, how they want to live their last few years of life, and how they want to deal with long-term care needs.”
Established in 2019, the Valley View Advisory Committee came under the stewardship of Mr. Amo in 2022 with an amended mission to evaluate the feasibility of a new long-term care campus.
More than 100 acres of the Valley View nursing home property are undeveloped.
Over the past few years, advisory committee members came up with a vision for a new intergenerational continuing care campus as well as a one-stop aging information center for county residents.
“[We have] about 86,000 individuals over the age of 60 right now in Orange County, and that’s the size of demand,” Mr. Amo said at a recent health legislative committee meeting, adding that a countywide information center would help seniors navigate various aging options.
The new continuing care campus was also conceived by the advisory committee members in the hope of financially sustaining the money-losing county nursing home in the long run.
In fall 2023, the county sent out a request for proposals for the development of a master plan based on the visions of the advisory committee. Six companies responded, and a scoring committee recommended Health Dimensions Group.
“At this point, we are not talking about building anything,” Mr. Amo said at the March 7 legislative meeting. “[This is about] getting a master plan that shows everybody what we really want to do and how we are going to do it, and then we can figure out what we want to do next.”
