Sun Setting On Park Place, Pacific Place

Nearly 100 residents with physical or intellectual disabilities are living in new facilities and about 250 workers have been forced to find new employment as the result of Thursday’s planned closure of Park Place (Glenwood) and Pacific Place (Pacific Junction) skilled-care and rehabilitation centers.

Massachusetts-based Five Star Quality Care, owner and operator of the two facilities, announced the closures last December, citing financial issues.

“The decision to close these facilities was based on an unfavorable financial outlook,” Five Star officials stated in a prepared press release. “The cost of operating and maintaining the facilities is considerably higher than the revenues it generates and continued operations are no longer feasible.”

Donna Hawley, regional director of operations for Five Star Quality Care, told The Opinion-Tribune Friday many former Park Place and Pacific Place residents have been placed at other facilities. The remaining residents are being placed this week. State law requires skilled-care facilities to place all residents before closing.

“The facility and the providers of Iowa have come together to find placement for all of the clients at Park Place and Pacific Place,” Hawley said. “Most of the clients went to facilities in Iowa.”

Hawley couldn’t provide a specific number, but said some former residents from the two facilities have been placed at the Glenwood Resource Center (GRC). The possibility of placing some of the former Park Place and Pacific Place residents at the GRC has been a topic of discussion during legislative meetings in Glenwood in recent months. Hawley was asked if the placements at GRC would be temporary or long-lasting.

“Some of our clients did go to the resource center,” Hawley said. “I’m assuming that’s permanent. I don’t know anything different, and of course, I didn’t do the admission there so I can’t really tell you.”
Messages left with the Iowa Department of Human Services to confirm placement of Park Place and Pacific Place residents at the GRC have not been returned.

Glenwood banker Larry Winum, president of the Mills County Economic Development Foundation, said he’s also had difficulty verifying client placements at GRC, but suspects the number to be very low.
The Mills County Economic Development Foundation offered its assistance in trying to find a new owner for Park Place and Pacific Place.

Winum and other economic development leaders are concerned about the impact the closures could have on the community, noting Park Place was the third largest employer in the city of Glenwood, behind the GRC and Glenwood Community School District.