Hebrew Home unveils expansion

The Hebrew Home at Riverdale has big plans for its Palisade Avenue campus and that has its neighbors nervous. Several of them — among the dozens of spectators at Community Board 8’s Land Use Committee Meeting on Monday — peppered the home’s CEO and President, Dan Reingold, with questions as he and his architect presented a slide show outlining an ambitious construction effort that would add four- to eight-story buildings, bury parking underground and institute a whole new way of providing care for the elderly. 

Mr. Reingold explained that the Home has shifted its emphasis from intense nursing care to more opportunities for independent living. He said he wants to create New York City’s first CCRC — continuous care retirement community.

He and architect Richard Rosen, of Perkins Eastman, described CCRCs  as both a new way to provide care and a new way to finance it for “middle to upper middle class” seniors. 

The Home expects residents to purchase their apartments and then pay monthly fees for lifetime care. At the end of life, a resident’s estate would get back 80- to 90-percent of the upfront payment. Residents could progress from independent living to assisted living and to intensive nursing care as necessary, without ever moving from the campus. Mr. Reingold said he hoped to attract Riverdalians who would want to stay in the community.

The Home is well-known for the quality of its amenities, including art galleries, seminar programs and a park-like setting with unobstructed views of the Hudson River and the Palisades. 

The new structures — to be built at 5801 Palisade Avenue on a 14-acre site just to the south of the home’s existing campus — would add more amenities, including a number of different dining options and shuttle service to the Riverdale MetroNorth station, Mr. Reingold said. 

In addition, he said, the Home’s master plan includes adding two stories to its existing Goldfein Building as well as replacing an above-ground parking field on the northwest corner of the campus with a two-story addition to its Riverwalk apartment complex.