Planners OK Hospice Center
By Don Del rosso
Graphic by Thom Kaye
By Don Del Rosso
Culpeper Times Staff Writer
Hospice of the Rapidan cleared its first hurdle last Thursday toward building a care center for the terminally ill near Sumerduck.
Fauquier County's planning commission on Sept. 24 unanimously recommended that the county board of supervisors approve the project.
The board probably will hold a November public hearing on the proposal.
Hospice Executive Director Kathy Clements declared herself "surprised" and "pleased," because the commission seldom acts so swiftly on an application.
It typically postpones decisions on applications and continues public hearings on them until the next month and often beyond.
In the hospice center's case, the commission held a brief hearing on the proposal Thursday and minutes later enthusiastically backed it.
"I hope this facility will be built in Lee District," said planning commissioner John Meadows, who represents the district and Sumerduck.
Meadows praised Robert and Betty Niles, who agreed to donate 14.6 acres on Royalls Mill Road for the hospice home.
So did planning commission chairman Jim Stone (Cedar Run District).
"You've got stars in your crowns," Stone told the couple, who attended the Sept. 24 commission hearing at the Warren Green Building in Warrenton.
"I'm taking one hurdle at a time, and hopefully that's one hurdle toward building a hospice center," Clements said of the commission's endorsement. "We have a timetable of about a year to get the site plan developed."
Then the hospice will "gear up a capital campaign to raise money to build this," she said.
It may cost $3.5 to $5 million to build the center, according to Clements. "But hopefully it will be lower than that," she said.
Fundraising experts advise her it would take about two years to raise enough money to build the center.
The hospice has no construction schedule or approximate opening date for the center, Clements said.
Based in Culpeper, the 26-year old hospice serves about 300 terminally ill people in the area, half of them Fauquier residents.
The planned two-story residential-style hospice center would include 10 beds, offices, a kitchen, a dining room and meeting space for counseling family members of clients.
Up to six hospice staff would work at the center, plus two professionals who would be there around the clock.
Most of the organization's administrative staff would remain in Culpeper, Clements said.
For years, Hospice of the Rapidan believed its service area (Fauquier, Culpeper, Madison, Orange and Rappahannock counties) needed a care center.
In 2005, its board hired a consultant to conduct a survey, which confirmed that belief, Clements told the planning commission.
A center would allow the hospice staff to provide specialized care "when care at a patient's home isn't feasible," Clements said.
She said center patients would include people who live alone, have no primary caregiver or, for variously reasons, cannot be properly cared for at home.
E-mail the reporter: ddelrosso@timespapers.com