Cedarbrook nursing home getting $500K boost
The major expansion of Cedarbrook Senior Care and Rehabilitation in South Whitehall Township is getting a $500,000 boost thanks to federal funding.
Cedarbrook is in the midst of a $67 million upgrade that includes building a fourstory, 240-bed addition. The expansion maintains the number of beds at 473, but will let Cedarbrook reduce the number of residents in a room from three or four to one or two, and eliminate communal restrooms by providing in-room bathroom facilities.
Lehigh County Director of General Services Rick Molchany said he expects the work to be completed in 2024.
“Cedarbrook is a place for our most dependent and vulnerable population,” Molchany said at a Friday press conference at Cedarbrook. “We’re very proud of this in Lehigh County.”
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey announced the $525,000 in community project funding during the press conference.
Casey said these kinds of investments need to continue and criticized the country’s legislators that are proposing to cut Medicaid, which insures many of Cedarbrook’s residents.
“This is an investment in the future of this county,” Casey said. “By making sure that those who have given us so much — older citizens here in this county or in any county who have fought our wars or worked in our factories, who raised our children, who gave us the most dynamic economy in the history of the world — they should be afforded the kind of dignity and long-term care that we all try to provide for them. This is a place where that happens.”
“We reached out to (Casey) and he listened and he made things happen,”
Lehigh County Executive Phillips Armstrong said. “That’s why today we have Senator Casey here with us, because we are tremendously grateful for his support and his help.”
The second phase of the work, costing roughly $45 million and scheduled for financing in 2026, would include:
Reducing the number of beds per room.
Installing resident room bathroom facilities.
Renovations to mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, including adjusting the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system to better protect against the spread of infections.
It’s expected to finish in 2029.
Lehigh County prioritized funding for the Cedarbrook renovations as part of its 2023-27 capital plan.
Started in the 1840s,
Cedarbrook is one of 17 county-owned care homes
in the state, and it houses primarily older residents
who can’t afford private nursing homes.