Framework and wall panels are visible at the future site of Aase Haugen home in northern Decorah. The $20 million project is slated for substantial completion in November of 2025. (Photo by Seth Boyes)
Those traveling the roadways north of Decorah likely can’t help but notice ongoing site work in that part of town. Progress on the massive Aase Haugen building project there is on schedule, according to officials with the nursing and assisted living facility.
Aase Haugen Senior Services broke ground on the facility’s site in April, and the structure is taking shape just off of Highland Drive, between Glen Barth Circle and Massman Drive in Decorah. The relocation of Aase Haugen’s campus will also place it within the same neighborhood as the organization’s other independent living communities of Vennehjem and Nabotunet north of the city.
The 72,000-square-foot Aase Haugen building is expected to provide assisted living apartments, long-term nursing care rooms, and specialized dementia care rooms — all of which will include a private bathroom.
According to Joel Farley, Aase Haugen project manager, the foundation of the new complex is complete, and wall panels are now going up. The roof trusses will follow, according to Farley, and substantial completion is slated for November of 2025.
The new building will replace the existing senior care building on Ohio Street, about a mile south of the current construction project.
According to Aase Haugen administrators, the project cost is coming in at more than $20 million. Organizers successfully secured a $12.7 million dollar loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development more than a year ago and were awarded an additional $1 million dollar grant through Emergency Rural Health Care funds — Aase Haugen has also self-funded approximately $5 million for the project. Aase Haugen aims to raise $3 million through a capital campaign, called “A New Place to Call Home.” Organizers said approximately $2 million in gifts and pledges have been raised so far, and additional funding is being sought.
“I am asking for your generous contributions to our capital campaign so that the seniors in our community have the same level of support that Decorah has so generously shown for our community childcare, public school systems, colleges and universities, tourism, parks and recreation, local hospitals and medical facilities, and the downtown and area business, all which make Decorah a great place to work and live,” said Sam Boeke, Aase Haugen executive director.
Decorah’s Aase Haugen is named after a Norwegian immigrant of the same name, who cared for her entire family through their final days and had no family of which to speak by age 42, according to information from the nursing facility. She became a philanthropist and died in 1910 at the age of 69, bequeathing her large estate to the Norwegian Lutheran Church to “build a home for the aged in her name so that no one would ever die alone.” The first Aase Haugen home was complete in 1915, according to the facility’s website.
The organization is governed by 23 local churches and projects nearly $500,000 in expenses for charity care by the end of 2024.
To support Aase Haugen’s “A New Place to Call Home” campaign, visit aasehaugen.com/aase-haugen-foundation.
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