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What Goes Up at Tower One
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Business New Haven
11/25/2002
By: BNH
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Tower One, part of New Haven's Tower One/Tower East retirement community, will receive a federal grant worth more than $2.8 million.
The $2,843,444 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development's (HUD) Assisted Living Conversion Program will fund the creation of a new assisted-living facility at the non-profit downtown retirement community. This is the third grant Tower One has received from the Assisted Living Conversion Program (ALCP).
The Assisted Living Conversion Program was launched in 2000 to fund the conversion of existing structures into assisted-living facilities. According to HUD, approximately $93 million in grants are available this year. Earlier this month HUD announced that it was awarding $54.3 million to be divided among 12 states. Connecticut received more than $9 million, the second-largest award of any of the 12 states.
"It is designed to address elderly aging in place issues," according to Julie Fagan, field office director of HUD's Hartford office. "The ALCP grant pays only for the hard costs of conversion."
Tower One/Tower East is already providing assisted living services to many of its more than 400 residents, according to Tower One/Tower East President Dorothy Giannini-Meyers. "There is a large demand for affordable assisted living," she notes.
Tower One will use the grant to partially fund an $11 million project, explains Giannini-Meyers. The project, which will take 18 to 24 months to complete, includes a new entranceway, renovated dining room, offices for social workers and physicians, and six floors of converted assisted-living apartments.
Giannini-Meyers explains that rooms on the six floors will essentially be "gutted out to the wall" to adapt them to their new purpose. Bathrooms, doorways and kitchens will be made wheelchair-accessible and new common rooms will be constructed for socializing.
Giannini-Meyers says that Tower One is adjusting its environment to fit the needs of residents. However, she notes that those needs have changed significantly since the erection of the building in 1971.
"Tower One was built more than 30 years ago," says Giannini-Meyers. "It's configured like a building made 30 years ago. They didn't think people in their 90s or 100s would be living here. It was built for people in their 60s or 70s. Their needs change."
The most recent ALCP grant is not the first Tower One has received. In November 2001 and December 2000, Tower One received $6,685,459 from the program to construct 44 new units, install handrails in hallways and improve the overall wheelchair-accessibility of the building.
"Three grants in a row is unique to the program," says HUD's Fagan.
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