Fairfield nursing home may reopen in months

A newly organized nonprofit group is trying to reopen a Fairfield nursing home closed in June by the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society.

Fairfield Care President Carl Felgenhauer said Good Samaritan, after failing to sell the facility, agreed to give his group a quitclaim deed to the property he said is important to the town’s economy.

Unless an unexpected snag develops, he said, Fairfield Care should have the deed by the end of September.

Good Samaritan said last spring it was losing $300,000 per year on the underused facility, parts of which are more than 50 years old.

Felgenhauer said the group’s first priority will be repairs to a leaky roof, and allowing tenants forced out of 16 senior-living apartments to move back in by Nov. 1.

“People are waiting in line to come into it,” he said.

Felgenhauer said Fairfield Care is still working on a business plan, but he anticipates leasing the facility, which also includes 43 skilled nursing beds and 10 assisted-living units, to a company with experience managing nursing beds.

Fairfield Care does not have a license to operate a nursing facility, he said.

Felgenhauer said Fairfield Care was organized to preserve jobs, housing and health care in the community where his family has lived for five generations.

“If we don’t do this, then another small town in southern Spokane County will disappear,” he said.

He said he was reassured last week by Good Samaritan’s legal department that transfer of the property was going forward.

“It’s going to happen,” Felgenhauer said.