Photograph by Robert Scheer
Our Lady of Fatima Villa CEO Preston Wisner shows conceptual drawings for the proposed new retirement
and nursing complex.
By Clarence Cromwell
Somewhere in Saratoga, a new retirement and nursing complex might open its doors to 139 seniors before the turn of the century as a replacement for the 51-year-old Our Lady of Fatima Villa.
The proposed 80-apartment, 59-bed nursing complex could be built on any of three properties, Villa CEO Preston Wisner said. But he refused to name two of the sites until project plans are more certain.
Wisner identified one potential location as the four-acre Saratoga-Los Gatos Road site, now occupied by Our Lady of Fatima Villa.
Wherever it's built, the complex will cover six to eight acres and could cost up to $17 million, Wisner said. Wisner added that he's readying to build on any one of the three sites.
The Villa has negotiated first rights to purchase one of the unnamed parcels. It also has paid $250,000 for a house and land along Oak Street, enlarging its property there to make room for the project.
But Wisner said he would rather move than construct the complex in the Oak Street area.
"I prefer to go to a new site," Wisner said. "It's easier to build and I could just transfer people from here to there."
If the complex ends up elsewhere, the Villa will tear down its Saratoga-Los Gatos Road building and sell the property, Wisner said.
Wisner started planning the new construction about five years ago, he said. He intends to expand the the Villa's base of residents from nursing patients to a clientele ranging from active and independent retirees to the bedridden. Most residents would be in their 70s or 80s, the age of current residents.
Drawings propped against Wisner's office wall outline his vision of the new complex. Three wings would contain 50 independent living condos. Two wings would be dedicated to 30 assisted-living apartments for residents needing help to bathe or do housework. A 59-bed skilled nursing facility would care for patients in ill health.
A common-area building would house dining facilities, a social services office and a doctor.
Wisner hopes to attract aging Saratogans who wish to sell their expansive houses and retire to a simpler life--without leaving the community they live in. "People want more for their lives than to end up in nursing homes," Wisner said. "They want to stay in the same place."
Wisner calculated that the community will need plenty of retirement units by the time the facility could open in 1999. He predicts a shortage of about 71 units in Saratoga and Los Gatos by that year, if the complex isn't built.
Capital for building a new complex may come from the Catholic Health Corporation, a 100-member organization of nursing homes that use their collective assets as collateral for bonds.
Our Lady of Fatima's 85-bed nonprofit skilled nursing facility on Saratoga-Los Gatos Road was opened in 1947 by the Dominican Sisters of Kenosha, Wis.
The proposal, not yet filed at City Hall, follows a similar expansion of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows complex on Fruitvale Avenue.
The Odd Fellows project, ap-proved Feb. 21, will put two new apartment buildings and 19 duplex cottages on the property. The campus will grow from 170 housing units to 307 and from 68 nursing beds to 99.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, March 27, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved