Building a Community: The Westwood Story.

How the addition of an apartment structure opened a new world of campus-style senior living

Looming high on a bluff above Lake Superior in Duluth, Minnesota, is a complex of connected buildings that do a compelling job of fulfilling St. Benedict's sixth-century concept of a nearly self-sufficient monastic world: a self-contained community that can meet the needs of its members but which, at the same time, invites the outside world to enter and be enriched in a myriad of ways.

The Benedictine Health Center, a nursing home sponsored by the Benedictine Sisters of Duluth and a member of the Benedictine Health System, has embodied St. Benedict's concept in a series of buildings, the earliest dating back to the early 1900s and the latest an 80-unit apartment building designed for both healthy seniors and assisted living residents. Opened in May 2000, the apartment building, located on the campus of the College of St. Scholastica, has been named Westwood after a 12th-century Benedictine monastery in Worcestershire, England, that flourished during the reign of Henry II. Designed by Damberg, Scott, Gerzina, and Wagner of Duluth, Min nesota, this newest structure in a continuing care facility is neatly linked to other major buildings on a 160-acre campus that includes a four-year college, a Benedictine monastery and a nursing home.

Connecting these structures presented unusual design challenges because of the steeply sloping land and the high ceilings of the nursing home. This connectivity, however, makes the nursing home, monastery, chapel, library, auditorium and college classrooms completely indoor accessible to residents of the new apartments, even in northern Minnesota's frigid, icy winters.

Project architect Rebecca Lewis, who headed a team consisting of Randy Wagner, principal architect, and Greg Schendel, project manager, regards the project's total accessibility as its outstanding feature. That accessibility, she says, is threefold: "inner" accessibility in each unit and the common areas; "staff accessibility" allowing professional personnel to move quickly to Westwood from the adjoining nursing home, especially in cases of emergency; and "visitor accessibility" in the "open-arms" Y-shape of the building and the building's placement on the land.

The emphasis on accessibility was care fully thought through. Every apartment--not just the 35 designated for assisted living--is compliant with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards, although care was taken to avoid suggesting a nursing home environment, especially in the independent living areas of the building. In anticipation of elderly visitors, a covered drop-off en trance was provided, carpeting and flooring installed that ensure safe footing, and elevator accessibility provided for every area of the campus complex. The architects ensured privacy for the nursing home residents by permitting direct public access to that building only on the first floor, at a point where the apartment building and the nursing home flow together in a modified "town square" design.

In its exterior as well as its interior appearance, Westwood contributes to the unified visual impact of the campus. Its exterior stone and concrete harmonizes with the brick of the adjoining Health Center and, to some extent, matches that of the main monastery building. The facade and window rhythms of Westwood echo those of the two buildings as well, as do its crowning pediments.

Perhaps even more significant than the physical linking of the buildings themselves is the linking of generations within the buildings. The Benedictine Health Center houses a childcare center that accepts children from the age of 33 months to five years. The children regularly visit those Center residents who wish to see and briefly socialize with them, and Westwood residents will be welcome to participate as they wish in daycare activities.

In the College of St. Scholastica, The Center for Studies in Aging under the direction of Dr. Chandra Mehrotra, psychologist and gerontologist, expects to draw on the wisdom and experience of the senior residents in a number of ways. Dr. Mehrotra hopes that the seniors will be resource persons in college classes, not only in gerontology, but across the curriculum. He views these guest appearances as benefiting both the students and the senior guests, who will be afforded an opportunity to reflect on and organize their life memories. Less formally, Dr. Mehrotra expects to involve individual students and seniors in mentoring relationships. He also sees the assisted living section of Westwood as a clinical training site for students majoring in one of the College's widely recognized health-related specializations: nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, clinical laboratory science, exercise physiology, health information management and psychology. For Westwood residents, the College offers continuing education in regular class rooms or in its well-established and highly successful Emeritus College and/ or Elderhostel programs.

In all of these encounters, formal and informal, planned and impromptu, Dr. Mehrotra is intent on achieving two major goals: the realization on the part of everyone that diversity exists in every age group and the enrichment of all participants, young and old.

To achieve its construction goals as well as the overall objectives of the monastic community--i.e., respect, hospitality, stewardship and service--the Benedictine Health Center made a major commitment to the new building, both financially and in terms of time and community involvement. Darlene Ramey, Westwood director, scheduled 10 public meetings early in the planning process to inform the Duluth community of progress in planning and to garner input from seniors on what they envisioned in a "dream building." Turnout for the meetings was impressive, and many of the ideas generated by seniors (who were potential residents) and their families were incorporated into the final plans.

But turning dreams into bricks and mortar involves more than meetings and architectural plans, important as those factors are. The actual construction of Westwood took on a special flavor be cause of the steadily increasing sense of ownership evident among the workmen employed in the task. According to Lewis, the Westwood workmen clearly believed in this endeavor, and that attitude was reflected in their achievements. "Work became craftsmanship," she stated. "It can't be forced, but when it happens, it's wonderful."

Beautiful, well-designed and blending into its hardy northern setting, Westwood will stand for many years as testimony to the foresighted people who envisioned it, the craftsmen who built it and St. Benedict, who decreed, "Let care be taken of the sick as of Christ Himself."

Sister Mary Richard Boo, OSB, PhD, is director of communications for the St. Scholastica Monastery, Duluth, Minnesota.