Augustana Continues Plans for Expanded Senior-Living Campus

Apple Valley’s Planning Commission on Wednesday reviewed master sketches for a proposed expansion of the Augustana Health Care Center in Apple Valley, which would add several senior living and care facilities to a “continuum of care” campus over the next seven years.

Construction on the first phase, a transitional care unit, could start in September, Apple Valley Community Development Director Bruce Nordquist said.

“Certainly, Apple Valley does not have this continuum of care campus,” Nordquist said, saying that the focus on several senior market niches could be attractive to Apple Valley residents and also other residents of Dakota County.

Augustana has senior apartments and a long-term nursing home care center east of Garrett Avenue and a little north of 147th Street West. The new facilities would be the 40-bed transitional care unit—for a few weeks’ stay after a surgery, for example—a building with 32 units of assisted living and 64 units for dementia care, a 40-unit senior apartment building and a 124-unit independent living building with a wellness center.

The campus would expand onto the six adjacent acres of land Augustana bought in December, which extends the property south to 147th.

Augustana board member Don Jacobson told the commission the expansion would provide the comprehensive services senior citizens are looking for.

“It’s more than a technical assignment, I can assure you, because seniors are beginning to read better the quality of services that are coming to them,” Jacobson said. 

Kathy Kopp, an Augustana representative, said the company would continue to look at senior-living needs down the road, especially at the seven-year mark.

“It is a long-term strategy based on the needs of the community,” she said.

Formal planning with the commission and City Council should take place over the next three to four months, Nordquist said. Augustana has been talking with the city about the projects for three years now, he said.

But several issues still need to be addressed. A requirement for the property is that no more than 20 percent of the land is covered by buildings, while the expansion plan shows 28-percent building coverage when all the facilities are complete.

Also, the city’s downtown building guidelines prefer flat roofs, as opposed to the sloped roofs in Augustana’s sketches. Kopp said residents have said they prefer a residential feel, which the sloped roofs provide.

Emergency personnel would need to confirm that they could easily enter the turnarounds and entryways in the dimensions planned, and the city would need to make sure that with the new buildings it could still access a large underground sewer line that runs through the property.

Despite the further planning needed, commission member Ken Alwin said he thought the expansion would be a good use of the space and hopefully could “draw more people into the core of Apple Valley.”