Ground broken on assisted living facility

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

More than 160 years ago, Steven Sell’s family emigrated from England to the United States and settled in what was then the small village of Van Wert, Ohio. On Wednesday, Sell returned to Van Wert to break ground on an assisted living center in the Towne Center development.

Sell, who in 1984 founded Health Care Managers Inc., which owns and/or operates a number of senior living facilities in Florida, broke ground Thursday on the Homestead at Towne Center project on property east of the Van Wert Health North clinic.

Sell, whose cousin is Rockford area physician Dr. Jerry Sell, said the local assisted living project came about through his friendship with Steve Wathen, owner of Equity, a commercial investment company that owns the Towne Center shopping center complex.

Sell said he and Wathen had become friends after working on a nursing home project in Florida and Wathen invited him to work on an assisted living center project at the shopping center complex.

What will result when completed is a 58,000-square-foot, 75-bed assisted living center called Homestead at Towne Center. When completed sometime in February 2021, the facility will employ 75-80 people, with a total annual payroll of approximately $2 million, Sell said.

“We chose the name Homestead because we want this to be a family home-like environment to take care of the more frail citizens of our community, and also the people who have some memory loss that need a lot of help,” Sell explained.

The facility will have mostly private rooms, as well as a rehabilitation area and what Sell called a “memory care” area for those suffering from memory loss.

A number of local officials attended the groundbreaking, including Van Wert Mayor Jerry Mazur, who said he was pleased to see additional jobs created in the city, Van Wert County Commissioner Thad Lichtensteiger, and Van Wert Area Economic Development Corporation Executive Director Stacy Adam.

Sell thanked Adam, among others, for her involvement in the program, which included working with Van Wert City Council to create an Energy Special Improvement District, for which Van Wert Health was the local sponsor, as well as helping develop a leasing opportunity with the Van Wert County Port Authority.

“There were a lot of things behind the scenes that had to happen,” Adam said of the project, while noting that the project was a learning situation that could also benefit future county projects.

“Learning what we did for all of that, we positioned ourselves in a very strong position to offer those same kinds of incentives, and use those same kinds of economic development tools going forward for future projects,” she noted.

Although there are several assisted living facilities in the area, Adam said she felt that, with Van Wert County having the oldest average age of any county in Ohio, there is future potential for a new facility.