Alzheimer’s Care for Worcester coming to the Odd Fellows location
The City Council has approved a 12-year, tax-relief deal to help finance construction of a $14.6 million, 82-unit rest home on the site of the former Odd Fellows Home on Randolph Road.
With the council’s unanimous vote, the clock appears to have struck midnight for the historic Odd Fellows Home, which local preservationists have been fighting to save.
At a meeting last month, the council’s Economic Development Committee gave local preservationists an opportunity to make one last effort to convince the developer to save at least part of the 19th-century, 3-1/2-story brick building at 102 Randolph Road as part of the project.
But Councilor-at-Large Frederick C. Rushton, committee chairman, said that while a meeting between the developer and Preservation Worcester did take place, a middle ground apparently could not be reached in regard to saving at least part of the building.
To make way for the rest home, the long-vacant Odd Fellows Home building, which has fallen into significant disrepair, will be taken down.
Even though the Odd Fellows Home is on the National Register of Historic Places, nothing can be done to block its razing because the one-year demolition delay previously imposed by the Historical Commission has expired.
The building has been on Preservation Worcester’s endangered buildings list for the past four years.
The so-called tax-increment financing deal approved by the council will provide the developer, KMRN Investment LLC, a Worcester-based company, with an estimated tax savings of $1.9 million over the 12 years of the TIF.
At the same time, he said, the city will receive an estimated $3.2 million in new property taxes.
City officials have said that 78 full-time jobs will be created by the project and the developer has committed to making all of those jobs available to Worcester residents.
“This TIF will provide good-paying local jobs that will go to Worcester residents,” Mr. Rushton said. “These jobs will put more than food and bread on their tables. It will also increase property values there.”
KMRN Investment purchased the property from Randolph Road Realty Trust in 2012 for $1.05 million.
The principals of the company, which also owns and operates nearby Dodge Park Rest Home, want to build a 61,920-square-foot, state-of-the-art rest home that will accommodate 82 elderly people.
Dementia and Alzheimer’s Care
The home will consist of two buildings, each with 41 beds. The facility will also serve those diagnosed with memory impairment, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
In regard to saving part of the Odd Fellows Home building, Ben Herlinger, one of the project’s principals, had previously stated that the state Department of Public Health would never give a permit for a rest home in the 19th-century building.
He said the building has load-bearing, structural, mechanical and electrical problems, and that the building’s antiquated layout would not have won approval from DPH for a rest home.
Mr. Herlinger said efforts were made to preserve the building’s five-story clock tower, but it was determined that would have been physically impossible.
The building has been vacant for more than 27 years, and previous efforts by others to redevelop the property by saving part of the historic building failed.
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The Rest Home, to be called the Oasis at Dodge Park will serve the Worcester community and specialize in care for those with Alzheimer’s, Dementia and Memory related diseases.
