Milford Wellness Center giving new life to former hospital

DELAWARE STATE NEWS/MARC CLERYTim Conrad with Jamestown Inc. paints in the Polaris Vent Room at the Milford Wellness Center.

• 
• 

Posted Monday, April 11, 2022 5:00 amBy Tim Mastro

MILFORD — Construction and renovations have continued at the Milford Wellness Village to kick off 2022 as more occupants are making their way to the former site of Bayhealth’s Milford Memorial Hospital.

The 266,000-square-foot campus was sold to Nationwide Healthcare Services in 2019. The campus is now just over 80% occupied with about 30,000 square feet of space available, according to the village’s executive director Lon Kieffer.

“The vision of this campus is to fill gaps in health care,” Mr. Kieffer said. “Not compete with others that are already out there.”

Four projects were completed in the last few months, with one more facility scheduled to open in May.

The campus added 60 beds in its Polaris Healthcare & Rehabilitation Center, designed for nursing home care as well as short-term rehab care. This expansion, called the Riverwalk Unit, was the second phase for Polaris after it originally opened with 26 beds in 2020.

The Riverwalk Unit will be attached to a new Ventilator Care Unit, which Mr. Kieffer said will open on May 8.

Champions for Children’s Mental Health and the Delaware Assistive Technology Initiative both moved into the space on April 1 while Amedisys’ Compassionate Care Hospice became the campus’ first tenants in its Grier Building three months ago.

Pace Your Life, a program that allows seniors to live in their homes while they receive the care they need, anticipates opening “any day now,” Mr. Kieffer said, once it receives approval from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Other current tenants include — Aquacare Physical Therapy, Banyan Treatment Center, Education Health and Research International, Kidz Ink Academy of Early Academics, La Red Health Center, Nurses ‘n Kids, The Lab at Seascape, Village Audiology and WeCare Services. The campus also has a pharmacy, a new cafe and its main offices on the premises.

Mr. Kieffer said the campus is also building an expansion on the third floor of its main building for its drug and alcohol treatment program which should open in either June or July. Six primary care providers will be also relocating from the surrounding areas onto the campus, or adjacent to the campus, with the first arriving in June or July and the other groups should following by October.

Of the space still available, 20,000 square feet is in the main campus and the remaining 10,000 of those square feet are in the career building, which has also been fully renovated.

The campus currently has about 300 employees. When it gets to full capacity, Mr. Kieffer said that number should approach 500.

Mr. Kieffer said he was recently in attendance at the Central Delaware Chamber of Commerce’s 55+ Expo where he received a heap of positive feedback from the community on the progress the campus has made so far.

“I have community leaders coming up and just thanking us for saving this space,” Mr. Kieffer said. “It’s kind of an anchor for the surrounding neighborhood of the town. So many people came up to us and were commenting on it. One person said how much she loves walking her dog and how when the hospital first closed, she was uncomfortable because it was dark, and now she feels much safer.”

One of the final projects for Milford Wellness Village is to have an academic focus on the campus and Mr. Kieffer said talks are ongoing to do so.

“If that should occur, it really will create a youthful exuberance culture on the campus,” Mr. Kieffer said. “Somebody could go to school during the day and then in the evening, as they’re finishing their day in class, they go to the cafe to eat a late lunch or early dinner and then go work in the evening — all right here on the campus.”