City agrees to sell property for assisted living facility

• Building site

The site of the planned assisted living facility is across Heggen Street from the Hudson post office.

Talk about it

The city of Hudson is offering to sell the developers of an assisted living facility an additional piece of property to provide more space for the building.

After negotiating in a closed session Monday night, Sept. 19, the City Council reconvened in open session and voted to offer the 1.25-acre parcel for the price of $15,000. Goldridge Group of Eau Claire is reported to be the potential purchaser of the property.

The city-owned parcel lies immediately west of a 2.13-acre parcel on Heggen Street belonging to Stephen Kinney of Hudson. The Kinney parcel is on the west side of Heggen, north of the Comforts of Home facility and extending to Crest View Drive.

Kinney reportedly is selling his property to Goldridge Group, which plans to build a 38- to 42-unit community based residential facility on the site.

Dennis Darnold, the city’s community development director, said in a phone call Thursday that the facility would be very similar to the Comforts of Home facility for older adults with physical disabilities or dementia.

Community based residential facilities are licensed and regulated by the state.

The City Council at its Sept. 4 meeting voted to rezone the Kinney parcel from office district to multiple-family residential district to allow for the assisted living facility.

Darnold said he didn’t know the name of the company that would operate the facility, or who would own the building.

The council made the sale of the city property contingent upon Goldridge Group purchasing the Kinney property. The council also stipulated that no trees on the 1.25 acres can be cut and prohibited grading on slopes greater than 12 percent.

“It basically retains that parcel as it is,” Darnold said of the agreement. “Their (Goldridge Group’s) purpose for buying it is to allow them to have a little more space for building setbacks.”

Gerard Koehn of Goldridge Group and Kinney, an Ameriprise Financial investment advisor, haven’t returned calls from the Star-Observer inquiring about the future facility.

Tags: business, development, hudson