Ashley Gardens at Northpointe, a 2-year-old dementia-care facility at 12420 N. Ruby, on Spokanes North Side, closed its doors last month, laying off 23 workers and forcing eight residents to find other accommodations.


Two other dementia-care facilities here have had to change their plans following the apparent closure of Ashley Gardens Management Inc., the Issaquah, Wash.-based company that at one time operated the North Side facility and had been expected to operate similar facilities in Liberty Lake and on the South Hill.


Ashley Gardens at Liberty Lake, at 22710 E. Country Vista Drive, was built but never occupied, and its owners now are looking for a management company other than Ashley Gardens Management as it awaits state licensing.


The third facility, at 5925 S. Hailee on the South Hill, is in the final stages of construction and will open this spring under a different name and with a different management company.


Ashley Gardens Management, which reportedly operated a chain of six dementia-care facilities in the state, entered the Spokane market with great fanfare in 2000. However, that company now has gone out of business, says Bill Schourup, managing member of the limited-liability company that owns the Ashley Gardens at Northpointe property. Each of the Spokane facilities are owned by separate LLCs and were to have been operated by Ashley Gardens Management.


Efforts to reach Ashley Gardens Managements former chief executive, Donal McIntosh, were unsuccessful. Several of the companys other properties in Washington state now answer their phones under different names.


Schourup says his company has listed the 36-bed North Side property for sale with a Portland, Ore., real estate agency for $2.6 million.


Cedar Builders Inc., of Spokane, the construction company that had begun construction of Ashley Gardens South Hill facility, now is jointly developing that project with another Spokane business, S.L. Start & Associates Inc., says Susanne Buckmann, S.L. Starts director of community resources here. That facility, which will have 40 beds when its finished, is to be called Harbor Glen at Cedar Canyon and will open as a dementia-care center in March or April.


The 18-bed Liberty Lake facility is completed and is waiting for its state license to be approved in order to open, says John Kellar, a representative of Victor Lund, a Vancouver, Wash., businessman who is a member of the LLC that owns the property and whose company, Lundbuilt Construction Inc., built it. State approval is expected any day, Kellar says. Were looking to get management at this point, he says.


Ashley Gardens Management operated the North Side facility from the time it opened in the spring of 2000 until last summer, says Lisa Skelton, co-owner of Sound Health Management & Development Inc., of Bainbridge Island, Wash. Schourups group brought in Sound Health to take over management of the operation, as well as to evaluate whether it could be successful, Skelton says.


The problem was that it just never leased up, Skelton says. Ashley Gardens at Northpointe was licensed for 36 beds, but never had more than about a dozen residents, Skelton says.


Sound Healths recommendation: Shut the doors. The ownership entity (Schourups LLC) could not continue to fund the operating-deficit draws, which were quite a sum every month, she says.


Ashley Gardens staff helped families find alternate accommodations for the eight residents who were living there when it closed Dec. 15, she says.


Skelton and Schourup both say that they believe theres a glut of dementia-care beds on Spokanes North Side, following a flurry of new construction a few years ago there.


Joel Loiacono, the executive director of the Alzheimers Association Inland Northwest Chapter, says he believes that might be true. Other factors come into play, he adds, such as the reluctance of family members to put relatives who have Alzheimers disease into care facilities.


Ive heard it time and time againI promised him, or I promised her, or we promised each other til death do us part, Loiacono says.


In addition, Loiacono says stand-alone facilities such as the one formerly operated by Ashley Gardens Management might suffer from not having what he calls a feeder facility, such as an assisted-living care center that can transfer patients to a dementia-care facility when a heightened level of care becomes necessary.


Nevertheless, another North Side dementia-care center, Alterra Clare Bridge, which opened about a year before Ashley Gardens at Northpointe, stays relatively full50 to 52 residents for its 55 bedseven without a feeder facility. Ted Urban, the facilitys community sales representative, says it takes networking to keep Alterra Clare Bridge full.