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Summit County’s only assisted living home will close in December

Residents protest outside Elk Meadows Assisted Living & Memory Care in Oakley after news of its pending sale broke in September.
Kaitlan Blacksher
Residents protest outside Elk Meadows Assisted Living & Memory Care in Oakley after news of its pending sale broke in September.

But the sale of Oakley's Elk Meadows Assisted Living & Memory Care still isn't final.

When Elk Meadows resident Sharon Oliver heard the owner might be selling, she said it was like a “nightmare.” Now it’s official, and the loss is hitting home.

“There's just a camaraderie here that I've never felt in any facility before, and I've been in six—six facilities,” Oliver said. “This is just awful, and I think it's all about the almighty dollar, you know?”

She’s not wrong. The facility has been losing money, according to owner Gary Beynon at Colina Real Estate Partners. The losses compounded last month, when the pending sale was announced, because residents began moving out early.

So Elk Meadows is officially closing Dec. 1. Beynon said they informed residents Oct. 18 to give them more than the required 30 days to move out.

Midway-based addiction and trauma treatment center Chateau Recovery is looking to move in after that, but the sale still isn’t final.

“We do not have our financing in place, and so we were hoping to be able to keep people there much longer, at least until we knew that the sale was going to go through,” Chateau Recovery CEO Danny Warner said. “But the reality is those owners had … been losing money for the full time that they owned it for four years. The previous owners before that were losing money.”

Warner said Chateau Recovery will close the Midway location and move all its services to Oakley, in part because they need more space. He thinks a rural environment is important for Chateau’s patients, many of whom are veterans and people suffering from PTSD.

The end result for current residents is the same. Elk Meadows has been bussing residents to different locations run by their management company, Rocky Mountain Care, to help them find a home.

Oliver said they haven’t felt the same; Elk Meadows felt like home.

“It makes me really sad to think of losing touch with these people,” she told KPCW. “Because these people that are elderly, they might pass away. I might never see him again. That's the stuff that hurts.”

One of their community’s last events is their Halloween party Saturday, Oct. 26, from 3 to 5 p.m. The entire Oakley community is invited.

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