Armenian Elderly Home Starts : Valley Center Also to Provide Skilled Nursing Care
A multipurpose residential and health-care environment for the elderly--the longtime dream of the Southland’s Armenian community--is finally on its way to becoming a reality.
Ground-breaking ceremonies will be held today at 2 p.m. for the first phase of the $20-million Ararat Armenian Community Center in Mission Hills, followed by an evening banquet featuring Gov. George Deukmejian as guest speaker.
A spokesman quoted the governor, a longtime supporter of the home, as saying that for the first time Armenian senior citizens will be provided with a multi-dimensional care facility. And, that under a single roof, the elderly also will benefit from the center’s wide array of services and activities.
The retirement home and community center will be built in five phases on a 10.8-acre hillside parcel in the north San Fernando Valley, south of the intersection of the San Diego (405) and Golden State (5) freeways, on Mission Hills Road.
Bobrow/Thomas & Associates is the architect and planner of the development under the aegis of the Ararat Home of Los Angeles Inc., a nonprofit organization established in Eagle Rock in 1950.
Three Components
The Valley facility is expected to provide care in skilled nursing and congregate-care facilities, as well as independent housing for more than 600 residents.
Robert Wielage, a principal of the architectural firm in charge of the project, said the Ararat center will basically have three interconnected components: a skilled nursing facility, a central park for shared community facilities and a residential sector for the elderly.
The site has a 60-foot rise in the center of the property which, he said, lends itself to a Tuscan hill town layout cascading down the site.
“The style will be somewhat Mediterranean,” he said. “Naturally, while we are specialists in the design of health-care facilities for the elderly and try to lend a state-of-the-art approach to each new project, we are fully aware of a prevailing consideration, and that is the quality of life and human experience.”
Main Campus Kitchen
The 245-bed skilled nursing facility is slated for completion in 1988. This phase calls for the construction of the main campus kitchen, with an expected capacity of 3,000 to 3,500 meals a day, along with other infrastructure.
Phase 2 will add a 220-bed congregate-care center to house residents in a supervised living situation. A 7,000-square-foot community center will provide a specialized kitchen, day-care centers for seniors and children and for office space.
The campus will include a 12,500-square-foot multipurpose banquet room accessible to various Armenian organizations associated with the Ararat home.
Phase 3 will include a chapel and an adjoining museum. Phase 4 is a proposed 150-bed expansion to the congregate-care facility, and Phase 5 of the master plan proposes 18 senior citizens residential units. Three acres will be provided for outdoor recreational activity.
Southern California is home to about 300,000 persons of Armenian descent, the largest concentration outside the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. Armenia formerly was a kingdom in southwest Asia.
