About 250 residents and officials came out recently for the groundbreaking ceremony for the final phase of the Arboretum Villas at Plymouth Place Center for Senior Living in La Grange Park.
Among them were Wheaton residents Fred Tietze and Joyce Jolte, who plan to move to Plymouth Place.
“We’re very excited,” Holte said at the Oct. 7 ceremony. “We started looking for a retirement community in probably February of this year, and we were surprised to discover that so many of the communities have waitlists.”
The new construction, scheduled to begin in 2027, is the conclusion of a project that began in the last decade with refurbishing interior spaces at Plymouth Place.
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Next came the addition of 58 units in the original Arboretum Villas expansion, coming in at a price tag of $95 million and offering nine different floor plans.
The final phase represents a $50 million investment including 38 senior living units.
Mary Pat Flaherty, board chair of Plymouth Place, was happy at the prospect of the project nearing its final completion.
“I’m so excited,” she said. This is something we’ve been working on for a very long time.”
Plymouth Place CEO Jay Biere said Plymouth Place has a special place in the La Grange Park community.
“It’s really the icing on the cake of 80 years of dedicated service to older adults in the greater community,” he said.
Biere said though this expansion began in 2019, the pandemic caused a hiatus “because we wanted to think that through and do the right things for residents here.”
Biere pointed out that the new villas will have six different floor plans and a performing center to be named the Stacey Baker Hall.
“And the good news today is that we have 30 of the 38 homes already sold,” he said.
Biere gave credit to members of Plymouth Place’s team that helped make Arboretum Villas a reality, including Eric Harrmann with AG Architecture.
“As Jay mentioned, this master planning process started in 2019, so this moment is actually a little bittersweet,” Harrmann said. “Because a lot has changed in the world since 2019. I wasn’t gonna mention that thing that Jay talked about that slowed us down a little bit … Those first two phases over there are some of the most awarding and rewarding work that we’ve done as a firm in senior living. We’ve got five national architectural awards for this community, but that pales in comparison to what I’ve seen from the residents and what they’ve done to make it their home. As such, we came back and did a post occupancy evaluation of that phase to make strong suggestions for what we should change.”
La Grange Park village President James Discipio called Plymouth Place “the jewel of our community.”
“For generations, they have been our partner in serving older adults and their families,” he said.
Future resident Holte talked about how happy she and Tietze were to find out about Plymouth Place.
“We were very pleased to know that Plymouth Place was adding on two new buildings, 38 units, and that we could move in and choose things,” she said. “We get to choose the color of our flooring, and the color of the cabinetry, and the buildings in the villas that we’ve already toured are absolutely lovely. And so we’re really looking forward to this new adventure.”
Hank Beckman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.