SMITHVILLE – Baptist Homes and Healthcare Ministries have purchased a nursing care facility in Smithville formerly known as Smithville Living Center. They plan to remodel it, and it will reopen as a facility which will also offer specialized services for aging veterans.
Volunteer disaster relief (DR) workers from Clay-Platte and Blue River/Kansas City Baptist Associations offered to help with the demolition portion of the remodeling in order to get the facility ready for contractors to begin work in early January.
Baptist Homes and Healthcare Ministries president, Rodney Harrison said they anticipated the cost of the renovation to be approximately $12 million dollars but believe with volunteer labor, such as the DR groups provided, the final cost might be half of that.
Joe Dayringer, the western Missouri region DR coordinator, said they heard about the project in an associational meeting and rallied area volunteers to the project. “Many of these DR volunteers are veterans themselves,” Dayringer said. They spent five different days in November and December doing some of the preparatory work to get the facility ready for the remodeling. They had 91 volunteers from about 17 different churches help with the project.
The nursing care center building has been closed for some time and it used to house 101 residents (two to a room). The plan now is to open it up and make it all private rooms and some will have a 2-room configuration where there can be a living room and bedroom.
The volunteers took down ceiling tiles all through the facility, opening up the ceiling area for the contractors who will put in new wiring, plumbing, heating/cooling and other systems. They sorted out and stored furnishings, beds and equipment.
The volunteers filled storage units with equipment to be refurbished and recycled and they loaded several dumpsters with ceiling tiles to be hauled off of the construction site.
The facility also has a chapel area which is expected to be renovated and used for the Smithville Baptist Home programs and activities. But it will also be opened up as a church for the veterans and their families as well as for others in the area. Leaders of the facility are preparing for specialized care and services for veterans of armed services as the home is opened in the next couple of years.
Dayringer, a veteran of the Marine Corps and National Guard himself, said many of the volunteers were saying they might need to reserve a room in this veteran’s facility themselves one day in the future.
He said he appreciated the volunteers in DR who love to serve.