Erie County Medical Center Corp. dedicated its new $103 million, 390-bed nursing home on the ECMC Health Campus on Grider Street yesterday. Terrace View Long-Term Care Facility, named for the design feature of multiple terraces providing outside areas for residents, replaces the 87-year-old Erie County nursing home in Alden. Terrace View also combines in one location existing long-term care beds from ECMC.
Patients will be transferred from Alden into the new facility today and from the Skilled Nursing Facility at ECMC on Sunday.
The move from Alden to ECMC’s Health Campus focuses on providing higher quality, state-of-the-art care for residents. It also moves residents closer to family, increases access to employment for Buffalo and suburban residents and reduces operating costs for ECMC Corp. Terrace View will save almost $1 million annually simply by eliminating resident transportation costs between Alden and Buffalo.
Terrace View will also bring approximately 400 jobs back to the City of Buffalo. In the past, the Erie County Home was challenged to provide employment opportunities for city residents who had limited transportation to Alden.
“This move to ECMC’s Grider Campus took vision from our board of directors and collaboration with our community. Most importantly, this improves the lives of our residents and employees and saves ECMC Corp., Erie County and New York State taxpayers a great deal of money,” said ECMC CEO Jody L. Lomeo. “We’re especially pleased that residents will move to a fresh, state-of-the-art facility that incorporates the very latest in resident-centered thinking.”
Medicaid is expected to reimburse portions of the construction and the operating costs based on the number of residents who receive Medicaid. The Erie County Fiscal Stability Authority financed the project through its bonding authority.
The project came together rapidly after a July 2011 ground breaking. The new home is organized into small-scale, 12-bed households, each with a living room and fireplace, kitchen and dining rooms. Each floor features a generous outdoor terrace and an indoor terrace lounge with a view to the terrace.
“The new facility at ECMC is a clear step forward in design for a livable senior care community,” said Richard Cleland, ECMC’s chief operating officer.
Design and work on the building came mostly from local sources, including Cannon Design of Grand Island.
“What’s innovative is the personal space of each room, with a bay window, the small-scale households, the cascading terraces, the array of destinations. Shared communal spaces on the first floor, with adjacent gardens and courtyards, deliver the texture and diversity for a stimulating community for residents, families and staff,” Cleland said.
According to recent resident and employee censuses, residents’ families and nursing home workers will find the new home much more convenient. Eighty percent of the residents are from Buffalo or the first-ring suburbs. Terrace View will allow residents to be closer to family and loved ones who can participate in their care and well-being.
The facility, for which current residents had design input, is 275,500 square feet on five levels. It contains three floors of 96 skilled nursing beds each; one floor containing 66 sub-acute rehab beds; a 20-bed ventilator unit and 16-bed behavioral intervention unit on the ground floor, for a total of 390 beds.
The building is connected to the existing hospital and to other facilities on campus via a public corridor that will be used to transport patients and residents in need of varying degrees of medical care.
Photos by Charles Waldorf