Nursing home breaks ground on $10 million renovation

by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

Officials at the Daughters of Israel Nursing Home in West Orange broke ground Oct. 16 on state-of-the-art renovations to 68 rooms in two of its wings.

The two-year, $10 million construction project is designed to improve decor, expand wheelchair capabilities, and enhance amenities in the private and semiprivate rooms on the first-floor Slobodien Pavilion and second-floor Women’s League Pavilion, providing upgraded living conditions for 110 senior citizens.

“Our goal is to continue to improve the quality of life for our residents,” said Gary Beinhaker of West Orange, current president of the home. The renovations will result in rooms that are 20 percent larger, with private baths for each resident. Doors will be widened and handrails installed so that wheelchair-bound residents will be able to enter bathrooms without having to climb out of their wheelchairs. “It is a real issue of human dignity,” said Beinhaker.

In addition, there will be a new dining room with new furniture, a covered terrace in the Women’s League Pavilion, and refurbished solariums on both floors.

Plans also call for expanded high-tech nurses’ stations and an improved call-bell system so that residents requiring assistance can make quick contact with medical personnel.

With financial help from the Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey, Daughters will also have a new ambulance entrance designed to provide the clientele with a much-needed element of dignity, said Lawrence Gelfand, the home’s executive vice president. “Right now, when people go to the hospital, they are transported right through the front lobby, which is both undignified and very uncomfortable for the people going out and coming in,” he said.

Speaking at a brief ceremony before joining in the ground breaking, Kenneth R. Heyman, president of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey and a past member of the nursing home’s board, called the expansion and renovation “the important next step for the home to insure the highest quality home for our parents while operating in a very competitive marketplace.

“Daughters is one of the community’s most esteemed and long-standing institutions,” said Heyman. “It is the residence for the most frail and dependent elderly for whom there is no other Jewish option. Daughters provides a home for them and also serves their children in the best tradition of Jewish family and community. It bestows an honor upon all of us because of the dignity and care it provides for our parents.”

As he addressed the audience, Jerald Baranoff, a West Orange resident and a past president of the nursing home, recalled that “almost six years ago, Larry Gelfand and I were brainstorming about what the next large project for Daughters would be. I do not think either of us imagined it would take so long to go from that day in February 2000 to get to this point.”

The renovations are expected to be completed by the end of 2007, and most of the $10 million cost has already been raised through a capital endowment campaign, according to Sharon Glaser, director of marketing and public relations.

While construction is under way, residents whose rooms are to be remodeled will be part of a process called decanting. They will be relocated in groups of 10-12, then moved back to their new improved quarters over the course of the two-year project.

As he addressed the gathering, West Orange Mayor John McKeon said the project benefactors and participants served as “an example to my generation as to what it means to be a good and generous person.”

Then, turning his attention to the workers and professional staff at the home, McKeon said, “I thought of Peter Pan, the story’s lesson of never growing up, and the inner child who lives in all of us. There is something about all of you who are drawn to this profession that really makes these four walls a home to people — that inner child who brings a quality of life to people in their latter years.”

Robert Wiener can be reached at rwiener@njjewishnews.com.

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