The public is invited to attend a ground-breaking event Friday that will be both traditional and
nontraditional. It begins 3 p.m. at Heritage Corner Health Care Campus on Klotz Road.
While the traditional shovel ceremony will be done, the event will also include the unveiling of
expansion plans for a state-of-the-art memory care wing, an additional skilled nursing wing and Bridge
Home Health and Hospice Care Center, as well as educational exhibits about the site and music by the
Glass City Dixie Land Band. Refreshments will be provided by Heritage Corner’s Executive Chef Sean
Fitzpatrick.
The ceremony will be from 3 to 4 p.m. with local dignitaries, and 4 to 5 p.m. is the socialization hour.
Poggemeyer Design Group, which is doing the architecture plans, will give a virtual tour of the new
site; the SorbaShock company will show the safety of its new flooring; and the information technology
representative will show technological aspects of the expansion.
Guests are encouraged to use the entrance off of East Gypsy Lane Road.
Debra and Mark Manley, founders and owners of Heritage Corner, said the expansion will be done in the
front of the building, with the memory wing and the skilled nursing wing, each having 10 units, to be
built in the location of the front parking lot. The large garage on the north end of the campus will be
removed for construction of the eight-unit Bridge Home Health and Hospice Care Center.
Construction, estimated at $5 million, is expected to begin in fall and last for 10 to 12 months. When
the 22,000 square foot expansion is completed in 2010, it will add 30 new employees to Heritage Corner.
This is the campus’ fourth expansion. The original assisted living quarters opened in 1992. Seven years
later skilled nursing rooms were added to offer private suites for short- and long-term nursing care. In
2002 the campus added independent living apartments, complete with full kitchens, patios and fireplaces.
In 2007 Discovery Kingdom Child Care was opened for children from six weeks to 12 years. It is managed by
the Manleys’ two daughters, Misty Dimick, director, and Monica Manley, assistant director and lead
teacher.
Debra Manley said the skilled nursing care wing has been "hugely popular with the Bowling Green
community, that’s why we’re adding more."
Many aspects of the expansion will be state-of-the-art in keeping with the Manleys’ philosophy to be at
the very forefront of senior health care. For example, a friend of the family is producing SorbaShock, a
type of thick safety flooring which will be installed under the carpet. According to the couple, the
material is designed to absorb 68 percent of the impact from a resident falling, eliminating 35 percent
of bone fractures.
"This is brand new," said Mark Manley. "They have all their testing done. We’ll be the
first building in North America" to install SorbaShock. Part of the agreement with the company is
to do follow-up cases after falls to give the company "real life" situations and not just
research data.
Several innovations will be used in the memory wing for residents with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease,
including an electronic door lock system. Residents will wear a bracelet that will open only the door to
their room and prevent them from entering another resident’s room, a common problem in some nursing
homes. Family members who want to visit will have an identification badge to tap which will let them in
their family member’s room.
The latest in information technology is being used to make computerized records available to family
members so they know, on any single day, in what activities their loved one participated, what they ate
and if they took their medications. Also, video cameras will be installed in certain areas of residents’
rooms so family members can log onto Heritage’s Web site and see their family member through the
computer. The Manleys stressed filters and firewalls will be implemented to protect access.
"These are some really, really neat things we’ve created because we haven’t found them
elsewhere," stated Debra Manley.
