Levindale plots $32M upgrade to city campus - Baltimore Business Journal:

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The Baltimore nursing home facility and chronic care partof , filed its expansion plans with the state in If approved construction on a three-story patient towee and new lobby could begibn by January 2009 on its West Belvedere Avenud campus near . The projecr will add private patient rooms and a shared kitchen anda community-style livingh room for residents. Each floor will housew about 28 residents in settings similar toa single-familty house. The rooms, lobby and common arease will also feature wirelessInternet access. The new lobbt will also house art exhibits.
"When aging baby boomeras need assisted living, they aren't goinb to want the old shared rooms and shared bathroom model," said Aric Spitulnik, vice president of operations for Levindale. "Theuy are going to want something that resembleds theirown home." The facilitgy currently has a mix of private and shared patient rooms with roughlgy 172 nursing care beds. The site also has about 120 chronicv care hospital beds for elderly or disabled patients that need more extensivsemedical care.
The project, which could be open by 2010, is part of a largert expansion to expand the nursing home to 240 He said Levindale had considered building the new project on the forme Rosewood Center campus in Baltimore But the cost of constructing roads and sewer systems to servd the site wastoo much, Spitulnik Nearly 70,000 Maryland residents were living in nursing home facilities acrosa the state in 2006, according to figureas released by the Marylanr Health Care Commission.
State health leaders say Maryland will need to add 318 new nursinv home bedsstatewide -- including 65 new beds in Baltimorre -- by 2011 to meet the growty of long-term care