Wesley Village in Macomb plans to expand its range of the services.
CEO and Administrator Shelly Martin said the nonprofit retirement community currently provide independent living and nursing home services, and would like to add assisted living to their campus.
“We’ve been missing that piece for 45 years,” Martin told Macomb city council members during their committee of the whole meeting this week. “It will give us that piece that we’re missing between independent living and the nursing home."
She said there’s been an increase in demand for assisted living in the past 10 to 15 years. She said no current residents would be displaced by the project.
“It would be a 26-suite assisted living on our second floor, so taking existing independent living apartments, converting that to assisted living. They’re currently being underutilized. We have about 15 empty apartments right now,” Martin said.
Martin shared the plans with the city council because Wesley Village is asking to use the city act as a conduit issuer of bonding authority.
City Administrator Scott Coker said the city has done this before. He said the city has the authority to issue $10 million in tax exempt, bank-qualified bonds each year.
“We can either use those for our own use, or we can be what’s called a conduit issuer to other nonprofit,” Coker told the city council. “We have no plans to issue bonds this calendar year, so from the city’s perspective, it doesn’t go against our bonding capacity in any way.”
Martin said Wesley Village is planning for a $6.5 million bond issue, to be used as follows:
- $4.5 million of existing debt would be refinanced
- Approximately $1 million would go toward projects paid for out of the facility’s budget during the past few years
- Approximately $750,000 for the new assisted living facility
She said the goal is to bring in $600,000 from donors for the assisted living project, with $465,000 already raised.
The total cost of the assisted living project is $1.3 million.
Second ward city council member John Vigezzi said it’s important for the city to partner with community members.
“You’re very well respected in the community, so I appreciate the fact that the city can assist in doing this,” he said.
The city council must still approve the conduit issuer bonding authority.
Wesley Village intends to issue the bonds this calendar year.
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