Regional rehab facility opens north of Fillmore

       The Westside is becoming home this month to the first medical facility in the region dedicated solely to rehabilitation.
       The $15 million Center at Centennial is a three-story, 80-bed facility where patients enduring “sub-acute” rehabilitation - often from hip or knee surgery - will be able to stay while they recover.
       Depending on final inspections, the 66,000 square-foot facility on 3.6 acres at 3490 Centennial Blvd. is expected to open for business by the end of this month, possibly even next week.
       “This is great, a culmination of multiple years of work,” said Monte Murdock, a Colorado Springs public accountant who organized the project's business plan. “It's good to see it come together.”
       The center's operations are owned by 170 area physicians - primarily orthopedic surgeons - who invested in the concept. The real estate portion is owned by physicians and other investors.
       Previously, sub-acute rehab patients have been typically relegated to hospitals or nursing homes, which tend to be sterile and not set up to handle their recovery issues.
       The center's striking exterior - featuring a tower front making wide use of cultured stone (a concrete that looks like stonework) - is part of an effort to make the building look less like a medical facility and more like a hotel, explained architect Rob Seever of Keystone Associates.
       Similar stonework can be seen in all the buildings erected over the last three years in that formerly open area northwest of Centennial and Fillmore Street. Others are the Grandview Market Place shopping center (anchored by King Soopers) and the just-completed Centennial Health facility adjacent to Center at Centennial. This design continuity is no accident, according to Seever; former property owner Lyda Hill had wanted compatible (though not necessarily identical) styling as different commercial developers built up the area.
       The center's main lobby, large and sunny, adds to the “hotel” appearance. Seever said a grand piano may even be added. The idea is to make the place inviting for patients (who will stay an average of 100 days each).
       But the goal of the center is to offer more than looks. A 5,000 square-foot gymnasium includes equipment that works on the hips, knees, legs and arms. A full kitchen, capable of serving up to 100 people, will provide meals that will be “five star” in quality, according to Dr. Alexander Senkoff, a sub-acute care physician who spearheaded the overall project.
       The rest of the first floor will generally house administrative offices. The second and third floors are almost exactly the same - each having 40 private rooms with large windows, a meeting room, a hydrotherapy room, a main desk in the middle and a nurse's station on each wing.
       The bed in each room will be “fully adjustable,” Seever said, in response to individual medical situations. And the bathrooms are set up to handle people in different stages of mobility.
       There are even two rooms on each floor that are fortified to handle patients weighing up to 600 pounds. These rooms can also be used to isolate patients who may be sick and potentially contagious, Seever explained.
       Access to the facility is from Centennial Boulevard onto a private frontage road that serves the commercial properties north of Grandview Market Place.

Westside Pioneer article