HANOVER — In most respects, Heather Darnall’s life would hardly change at all if she moved into the supported-living complex that Visions for Creative Housing Solutions aims to build on South Park Street for adults with developmental disabilities.
By day, the 2000 graduate of Hanover High School likely would continue to take the bus to and from work in Dartmouth College’s Center for Comparative Medicine and Research at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
Evenings and weekends, Darnall, who has mild cognitive delay, would keep shopping and going to movies and meals with friends downtown as well as competing in Special Olympics basketball, bowling and track and field.
“I do the 100-meter dash, the 200 meters, the long jump and the softball throw,” she said Saturday.
In other ways, everything would change if she emerges from an already-growing list of tenant candidates for one of the 10 or 11 units in a complex slated to be built by 2022 on the site of the recently-closed Outreach House for the elderly, less than a mile from where she now lives with her parents.
In particular, Mary Ann and Bob Darnall, who are in their 70s, wouldn’t need to worry about their daughter once they’re no longer able to drive her to appointments and activities or to help her with chores such as paying bills and cooking.
“We’re fine right now, but who knows what’s going to happen to us as the years go on?” Bob Darnall, a retired neonatologist, said Saturday. “We started thinking about this a long time ago, but facilities like this just weren’t available in town. There weren’t a lot of options. This is absolutely ideal if it works out.”
Visions founder Sylvia Dow started widening the options for Upper Valley adults with developmental challenges in 2014, when she converted the former Kluge’s Inn, the Enfield resort that her parents opened in the 1950s, into an assisted-living complex. In the beginning, it housed six residents, including Dow’s two adult daughters, for whom Social Security covered room and board and PathWays of the River Valley provided mentorship and other services.
By 2017, a staff of 16 people were working with 11 residents there and word was getting around: The waiting list grew to a dozen, and the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority awarded Visions $50,000 to explore where and how to expand to other locations in the Upper Valley.
This year, Visions found two apartment houses on Green Street in Lebanon.
If the nonprofit, which Dow said Friday has secured a grant of $407,000 from a government source yet to be announced, is able to close on the property as scheduled in May, it would spend the summer and fall of 2020 gutting and remodeling. And if all falls into place by next December, 10 residents would move into apartments in one of the buildings, and cook, eat and socialize in the other, which also would house administrative offices and apartments for staff members staying overnight.
So far, Dow said, Visions has raised about $400,000, through private grants and individual donations, toward a renovation expected to cost around $750,000.
And at last count, the waiting list stood at 27.
“The need is so great,” Dow added. “There are many more assisted-living choices for seniors in the Upper Valley. The population that doesn’t have as many choices is individuals with developmental disabilities.”
While juggling the existing Enfield operation and setting the stage for Green Street, Dow also was attending meetings of Hanover’s Affordable Housing Commission. A group of Hanover-area parents of developmentally-challenged adults and Town Manager Julia Griffin joined her at the meetings.
“The parents are mostly older, and they’re worried about the future for their children when they’re gone,” Griffin said Saturday. “Together we’ve been brainstorming an option for Hanover, modeled on the Visions approach.”
The door opened with the closing, in June, of Outreach House. For more than 20 years, the nonprofit had provided assisted living for up to six elderly residents at a time. Eventually, the conditions of the average resident, who usually had moderate to advanced dementia, became more expensive to serve than the $3,950 payments for room, board and other services could support.
Griffin said that she learned about the available property from Marjorie Matthews, a neighbor of Outreach who also has a grown child with developmental challenges.
Earlier this month, Outreach donated the land and the house, which the town assesses at $811,700, to Visions. With help from the Twin Pines Housing Trust, Visions plans to tear down the structure and build new.
“We chose an organization with a similar mission statement to ours,” longtime Outreach administrator Susan Shinn said in a Visions news release about the property transfer. “(Visions) will continue to support a vulnerable population, enhancing independence and community involvement in a secure environment.”
Within such an environment, Visions residents in Enfield mingle in common areas for meals, TV, board games and other social interactions, “which gives us a corps, a team,” Dow said.
The Darnalls saw how it works last week and are crossing their fingers for Heather to join the Hanover team.
“There’s always something going on,” Mary Ann Darnall said. “That’s not happening at our house. She’s bored living with her parents.”
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com or 603-727-3304.