Elmhurst Poised To Revoke Nursing Home Permit

ELMHURST, IL — An Elmhurst nursing home wanted a two-year extension on its permit for an expansion, a project neighbors opposed.

On Monday, the City Council's Development, Planning and Zoning Committee recommended against extending the permit.

In a letter to the city earlier this month, Elmhurst Extended Care Center, 200 E. Lake St., said it was abandoning the project for now because of the economic effects of the pandemic. But it sought the two-year extension for when its situation improves.

In an interview Tuesday, Love Dave, the nursing home's administrator, said the facility is awaiting more conversations with the city on the project.

"Hopefully, we can work together for a compromise," he said.

The nursing home never began the project, which neighbors opposed because it was in a residential area. In November, the home's permit expired, but the city deemed the project "substantially underway," given the costs of drawings, purchase of building permits and erection of a construction fence, among other things.

"We bent over backward for the nursing home because of COVID," Alderman Mark Mulliner, a committee member, said in an interview. "Since the process started, it's been close to five years. That's too long. Things have changed significantly as far as zoning and nursing home requirements."

He said the city would begin the process of withdrawing all the conditions and variances associated with the project.

For months, the city tried to get answers from the family-owned nursing home about the status of the project, but got no answers.

On April 8, Eileen Franz, the city planner and zoning administrator, informed the nursing home that the city planned to take action to revoke the permit because of an apparent lack of progress.

Five days later, the nursing home's attorney, Scott Day, responded saying the long-term care industry has suffered greatly during the pandemic. Because of the high number of deaths in such facilities, many families are reluctant to send their loved ones there, he said.

The local nursing home's occupancy is 40 percent of what it was pre-pandemic, Day said.

Love said that because more people have been at home, they have a greater ability to take care of their mothers and fathers.

At the same time, he said many nursing homes are seeing a rebound in their resident numbers.

"We anticipate the same in the next year or so," he said. "We want the industry to normalize more before we jump into a big project. It's better to take a cautious approach."