(upbeat music) (uplifting music) - If you live in rural Central Illinois, you may have to travel to Peoria, Bloomington-Normal or even further to receive medical care.

Same for youth activities and services for seniors.

But soon, there will be a new, more convenient option for thousands of families in Peoria, Knox, and Fulton Counties.

Here's Phil Luciano with the details.

(gentle music) - [Phil] Rural communities in the area would be served by a new project targeting health and wellness.

Based in Elmwood, the effort involves three entities: The Graham Medical Group, The Greater Peoria Family YMCA, and the Elmwood Community Foundation.

The project has two phases.

The first phase is already in place.

The Graham Medical Group Clinic opened in Elmwood five years ago.

It offers a family practice and other medical care.

The second phase is still in the fundraising stage.

The Community Wellness Center and YMCA is to be built adjacent to the Elmwood Medical Clinic.

A swimming pool, gym, and other amenities would be open to residents throughout the area.

- Joining us with more on the community wellness center and YMCA is Andy Thornton, CEO of the Greater Peoria Family YMCA, Bob Seneff, CEO of Graham Health System, and Dick Taylor, treasurer of Elmwood Community Foundation.

Gentlemen, thanks for coming in.

- Yeah, thanks for having us.

- Thank you for having us.

- Exciting time.

Tell us a little bit about, Dick, why Elmwood is so blessed to be getting a facility like this.

Probably a lot of other communities out there very envious.

- Well, it all started... First of all, I should say that there's nothing like this that's serving our rural communities in the three counties that we intend to serve.

But the idea came from one of our board members who grew up in Elmwood, but currently lives in Washington, Illinois, and he could see the impact of Five Points on that area.

And so he, for months, suggested to us that this was a good idea and that we should pursue it.

And that led to discussions, of course.

We did a few visits to small communities that have a YMCA or fitness center and then we ended up doing our own survey to determine if our idea was something that service area would embrace.

- Now, Bob, Graham Health System, when people think of it, they probably think of Canton, but of course you guys have spread out from the big city.

Tell us your presence right now, Bob.

Yeah, so we've grown pretty substantially in the last five or six years, but we're in five counties now in 13 or 14 different locations.

We have a large undertaking in Galesburg and the Galesburg market.

We're in Macomb now, and then we have two sites here in Peoria County.

But our relationship with this project started back in, I believe 2017, got the idea to have a clinic at Elmwood from Fred Page, who's a local banker there years ago.

It just didn't make sense for us at the time.

Dick came and we met in our boardroom and talked about this type of a project, and we were really excited about it.

We actually physically went and looked at property together, where could we put this sort of multi-purpose undertaking of health and wellness at the same time and purchased the property, and we got our clinic up and going.

And the numbers have just been off the charts, in terms of, we have patients from over 220 different zip codes have come to Elmwood, Illinois, for healthcare.

So we really feel like that's the proof in the pudding, that folks will come from far and wide for healthcare to a smaller community or a smaller region of the state, they'll come for the wellness piece as well.

And that's really what we're after is that symbiotic relationship with the Y, that's really gonna, that's really gonna be the icing on the cake for us, selfishly.

- And Andy, you know, the Y has had a big representation in central Illinois in different cities.

Why expand to Elmwood?

What's that gonna do for folks there?

- Well, it made sense for us when the foundation came to the Y and asked if we would be interested in collaborating with them, because it was kind of perfect timing for us.

I had just come back to the community to lead the organization.

The organization was talking about expanding services and programs across, not only Peoria County, but the other two counties that were committed to serve as well, in Tazewell and Woodford.

And so it really made perfect sense to have a partnership with medical provider who has so much strength and capacity to do things from that perspective, to link arms with them and to provide services to a part of our community, in, you know, rural western Peoria County, that's pretty underserved when it comes to these types of services.

And so, and I think the other thing that's important is this is more than, this geographic region that we're committing to serve out in Western Peoria County, Eastern Knox County, Northern Fulton County is kind of a perfect place for a facility like this because there's so much population that could be a part of it.

18,000 people live in that service area out there who could benefit from not only the things that Bob provides in the medical facility, but just having access to a state-of-the-art fitness center, a recreation facility where they can gather with other people and really, you know, start to think about health, a healthy lifestyle in a different way.

- What are some of the other things that the Y will be able to provide to people at this facility?

- Yeah, so it's a 30,000-square-foot facility, give or take.

It's gonna have a state-of-the-art fitness center in it, just like any other wellness center would have.

It will have a pool in it, so there will be opportunities for swim lessons, lap swimming, water exercise classes.

There'll be a fitness studio in it where we can do land exercise classes.

A large gymnasium where we do, you know, youth sports programs or adult recreation programs in that gymnasium.

It's got a walking track that's up above the gymnasium so people can take part in that type of physical activity as well.

And then some community spaces where people in the community can just come in and use spaces for meetings, family gatherings, birthday parties, bridal showers, baby showers, those types of things.

So it really becomes the center of that rural region where people can gather for all different kinds of purposes.

- Dick, for people living in that area that we're talking about, between Canton and Galesburg and Peoria, say they wanted to go to the Y and take swimming lessons, how far of a drive are we potentially talking that they have to do now?

- Oh, Peoria, to get to Peoria or Galesburg, probably at least 30 minutes.

Canton is a little closer, I would say 25 minutes to get to the Y.

So it is a convenience to locate something like this in that hub of that service area that we've identified.

- Yeah, if you're talking an hour round trip, roughly, and then maybe an hour for your kids' practice, that's a big chunk of time.

- For sure.

- That parents are committing to by getting involved in these activities.

- Right.

- Let's talk a little bit about the health aspects of this.

What you have right now in Elmwood, do you pretty much have what you're gonna have, or is that gonna be even bigger?

- No, we're really just getting started.

So we have primary care, we have convenient care, or walk-in care.

We have a number of specialists that are there a day of the week or an afternoon of the week.

That's gonna continue to grow.

But the really neat part about this undertaking or this endeavor is three charities sitting at the table figuring out how can 1+1+1=4?

I think that's what we have here.

So the Elmwood Community Foundation owns the property, owns the building.

The Y leases it and runs that facility, and we lease space from the Y.

So aquatic therapy, we don't have that now, we can have that.

Cardiac rehab, don't have it now will have it, PT, OT, speech, don't have it, will have it.

So it's just a perfect, from a symbiotic relationship of the things that we can add on the health side because of the wellness side, and really vice versa.

So we'll be in the clinic every single day with our patients, and the other huge growth area for us is mental health.

We have seven or eight mental health providers now, and mental health is, unfortunately, a growing service line for most health systems and hospitals.

We don't have a community space to provide any of that type of group counseling.

Andy will have that space, so we'll grow that, and we'll beef up that service as well.

So we're excited for the communities we serve.

And it's not an Elmwood facility.

If we only were building a clinic and only supported by Elmwood, we wouldn't have built the clinic there.

We need the 10 or 12 other communities that really support us, and they're gonna support the Y endeavor as well.

And so that's what really excites us.

Right.

- I know that y'all did a lot of research in preparing for this.

Tell me about that research and what you found, as far as what people are looking for and what they say they really need in this area.

- Yeah, so we engaged in a feasibility study, where we hired a professional consultant to come in and do that work for us.

So it was independent research that was done.

And they developed a survey, they held focus groups with people, they did an online survey, they did some phone calls to people that live in that entire service area.

So we're talking about residents of Elmwood, residents of Brimfield, of Williamsfield, Farmington, and all the other communities around there.

And what we learned through that process was that not only were people interested in a facility like this, but they would pay for membership service, membership fees and access.

They would pay for their kids to be involved in programs and things like that.

And that was really kind of the icing on the cake for us as we were going through the process.

Everybody thinks it's a great idea, but we need to know that we can build a sustainable operation off of the participation, because that's what's gonna sustain the operation, right?

We're gonna raise money to build it, but once it's built, it's gotta sustain itself.

And that study told us that there was a large participation that we could expect for membership, which is gonna be the largest revenue stream for the operation.

That's consistent with how we operate in Peoria, and how most YMCAs across the country operate.

But all those additional programs, after school programs, youth sports programs for kids, swim lessons, those types of things will generate additional revenue.

Bob talked about the arrangement with the hospital where they will rent space in the facility, that's additional sustainable revenue for us to build an operation.

So the numbers are strong.

We were able to take the data and build an operating performer, and be able to justify, can we generate enough money to cover the expense?

The largest expense that we're gonna have in an operation like this is the people that we're going to employ.

So we're anticipating, you know, creating 50 jobs for this facility.

Most of them will be part-time, but we will have, you know, three or four full-time staff that we will hire to operate this facility.

And then a lot of support staff in a part-time environment.

And that adds up to about 50.

And then we will be able to, you know, cover all the other expenses that come with having a 30,000-square-foot facility, and all of the HVAC systems and the pool pumps and all those things generate cost.

And we can have a profitable operation from day one, based on the study that we did.

And that study was critical for us as an organization, and I think for the partnership to really be able to justify that this is more than just a dream, more than just an idea.

This is something that people really want to see happen, and we're really excited for that.

- And how are we raising the money for the initial build?

How's that working?

- It's all through philanthropy.

We were fortunate.

Darin LaHood's office pursued a grant for us, which we have received $3.75 million that will be administered through the USDA.

Along with that we have very generous gift from Graham Hospital of $1 million.

We have an anonymous donor that has put up a pledge of half a million, and currently we have two other major donors that are coming through but yet to be announced.

Right now we sit at about 60% of our goal for the building, so I think in the last seven or eight months, we've made good progress.

We hope to take it from the quiet stage to the public stage here in the next few months.

I might mention that a couple of the gifts that we're announcing later will be given to us as matching gifts.

So that should encourage other givers which we're counting on.

I might say at this time that this project and the operation of this project will not be on any tax roll.

We made that very clear from the beginning.

I know that's always a concern, that something like this appears in your community or communities, and what's this going to cost me now in the way of property taxes?

But we have designed this to not require that.

We do intend to raise additional funds for an endowment.

That endowment will be there to ensure that Andy has funding, even through the years that are a little lean, plus we'll have funds there for building improvements or repairs.

So I think we thought it through, as something that we do intend to be self-sustaining.

- Besides doing the research and finding out what people want and what they need, have you looked specifically at any other things like this in the country or any other locations?

Can you tell us a little bit about those?

- We have, and we didn't have to go very far, Mark, to find that.

- Okay.

- So the Community Foundation did some of this work before the hospital and the Y were even involved, where they went on a couple road shows and visited some YMCA facilities and rural communities kind of in Iowa and Missouri, and other places like that, but we looked at an operation in Mount Sterling, Illinois, which is a small little community of about 1,000 people that's down by Quincy.

And that's actually a branch operation of the Quincy YMCA that is very successful there.

On the other side of the state, near Mattoon in a little town called Toledo, there is a YMCA branch there too that is part of the Mattoon YMCA operation, and both of those facilities checked all the boxes for us.

They're in small towns, they're serving a larger population than just that one town where it's located, so multiple rural communities are benefiting from it.

People are traveling 15 to 20 minutes to drive and participate, and that's the service area that we've drawn out for our facility here.

And they're sustainable.

They've been operating with surpluses for quite some time.

Their operations are a little bit different, but that's how every YMCA is a little bit different from its neighbor down the road.

So we learned a lot from those YMCA operations.

And then another operation that we've gotten really close to is a community center, it's a non-YMCA facility that is operated in Rushville, which is in Fulton County, or in Schuyler County, I'm sorry.

And they've been in operation now for about three years.

They opened their doors in the middle of COVID, so in 2020, and they've been surplussing ever since they've opened their doors, and their membership participation is far greater than what they ever expected.

And so we didn't have to look very far to find some success, and we were very happy to do that, and we've learned a lot from those operations and how they've engaged not only, you know, the local community but the broader community, which is really the target for us.

- Bob, can you tell us a little bit more about what kind of a symbiotic relationship you hope to have with the Y?

Whether it's someone coming in for a medical service and then maybe going to the Y for some kind of a rehab?

- Yeah, exactly, so I have a heart attack.

I show up in Graham's ER.

I get on the OSF helicopter, I'm flown over here.

I have an intervention at St. Francis, but I go home.

And if I don't do what I need to do when I go home, I'm gonna be on that helicopter again in a couple years, so we really need to get that person into a cardiac rehab program.

If I live in Canton, that's pretty easy to do, because we've got cardiac rehab, we have aquatic therapy, we have all that right in the city of Canton at Graham.

We don't have that in Elmwood.

We don't have that in our other rural clinics.

So standing that up in Elmwood will be huge for those eight or 10 communities that Andy talked about earlier, that 18,000 population pool that can now get to therapy or get to aquatic therapy or get to mental health counseling is gonna be huge from that perspective.

The other thing that's gonna be a spinoff is getting more involved with the schools, 'cause it's gonna be a natural magnet for kids to come and play biddy basketball and biddy wrestling and biddy volleyball and all those things that can start out as youth to live a healthier lifestyle.

We're gonna be part of that and it's gonna benefit our providers as well.

The other nice part is from an economic development perspective, this is gonna be a huge project for the region.

I mean, tens of millions of dollars of economic development over the course of just the first decade.

You know, the 12 and a half million dollar construction turns into 18 or 19 million, but then it's another five or six or 8 million each year that spins off of that, with just all of the things that come to town for tournaments and for swim meets, and all that.

So it'd be huge from a regional perspective, not just a city of Elmwood perspective.

And selfishly for us, us being anybody in rural America trying to recruit young professionals back to a smaller community, this is gonna be huge to recruit physicians or accountants or attorneys or teachers.

That's gonna really be the additional icing on the cake, so to speak.

- Right.

Dick, is Elmwood ready for this?

(laughs) - Well, of course.

- Could be a popular place to be the next few years.

- Of course.

Well, again, we like to stress, this isn't just an Elmwood project.

The economic impact that Bob mentioned, that was actually a study done through the U of I Extension for us.

And they took into consideration the entire region.

So even though that facility's going to be on the north side of Elmwood, people in our adjacent communities are gonna see the impact as well.

- Can you tell us a little bit about what, we're gonna try and put up a map here so we can show folks where the facility is.

Tell us what it's like around there.

Are there other businesses in the area?

I'm sure there will be, if there're not now.

- Actually, no.

This is on the north edge of Elmwood.

It's right at the intersection of Routes 8 and 78, sits across from the golf course.

If you've been to Elmwood, you'll recognize where that is.

So one of the things that came out in the study that Andy referenced is that people do see this as a convenient location.

One of the important things for us in locating this was to make sure that we had access to utilities, and of course we do have that on the north side of Elmwood.

It was properly zoned for this building, and so that drove our decision.

The other thing I wanted to mention about the studies is that, the one that Andy referenced, actually specifically made contacts with people in all these communities.

So it wasn't heavily weighted for Elmwood, it was weighted evenly around those eight or nine communities in that 20-minute drive time.

I think that's an important point to make, that the responses were responses of that entire population that we're wanting to serve.

- When you looked at these facilities in other parts of the states, did you see things that you wanted to improve on or do differently, anything specific?

- Yeah, all the facilities were a little bit different.

So the facility in Mount Sterling doesn't have a pool, but it has a gymnasium and everything else.

The facility in Toledo had all of those amenities.

The one that we really kind of were drawn to was the facility in Rushville, and what they were creating, and maybe that's because it was happening while we were growing through our process, but we've learned a lot from them and just the way that they've laid out their facility, because we're trying to be as efficient as we can as we develop this facility.

We wanna make sure that the dollars we're spending are used properly.

And the way that facility was laid out was, number one, had all the spaces in it that we need, right, to do the things that we need to do and that the community was telling us through the survey that we need to offer.

But it was also easy to manage because of the way it was laid out, which reduces some of the cost for staff, right?

Because we don't have to have six different people in there managing different spaces because it's just chopped up in the wrong way.

So we were able to really be efficient that way and those are things that we've learned through that whole process, and I think that we have got the diagram and the right idea for what we're gonna be able to get the most participation from from that community and provide the most benefit.

- I'll just throw this out there through the research and through talking to people on the ground, so to speak.

- Yeah.

- What are some of the things that people are just really excited about as far as this new facility?

- Well, I tell you what, we visited all of these communities, and it seemed like we always left with the advice of, "whatever you do, don't build a pool" because Andy will tell you that is- - (laughs) Expensive.

- Yeah.

- A very expensive operation, but when we did our initial survey, and I think it showed up in the subsequent survey, that's what people were asking for, at least, I think 80% of the responses, the first thing they mentioned was access to an indoor pool.

So that obviously is a must for Bob's use of the building, but it's also something that we identified very easily that that's what people want.

- Yeah, and we've really felt the, "I wonder if this is gonna happen," and now we're to the phase where "when is it gonna open?"

I mean, people understand now the math behind it that we're moving, and we're at that seven-ish million dollar mark heading towards 12.5, and so we've got a lot of momentum going, and people are starting to plan around, hey, this will open, if it opens in the summer of 2026, and all those kind of things.

And we've actually seen, we've had a couple of providers at the hospital that have relocated to the Elmwood School District into that part of the country, because great schools, but also because of the Y and the golf course and just the quality of life that may be coming out of a bigger city to a smaller community where you're a little more involved with your kids' activities, and a little bit calmer lifestyle, something they're looking for.

It's gonna be- - So are we shooting for the summer of 2026?

- Yeah, if the stars all align, that's when we'd like to be in the ground, you know, this time next year and then it'll be about a 12, 13-month construction project to get it up and going and operationalized.

But feel very good about that schedule, and we've done our homework from that perspective as well.

- Yeah.

All right.

- You know, and to answer your question about what are people excited about, it really depends on who you talk to.

- Yeah.

- Because we talk to seniors who are excited about the ability just to get quality exercise opportunities.

We talk to moms who have young kids that want their kids in swim lessons or in youth sports, recreation programs or after school programs and those types of things, so it's gonna serve, like any good YMCA does, we're gonna serve people from the way we like to call "cradle to grave."

I mean, from the youngest to the oldest, you're gonna have opportunities to engage in programming that is intentional to help them build a healthier lifestyle.

And that's really a great answer to be able to provide, is there's nobody that can't benefit from this, there really isn't.

They just may choose not to.

- Okay, well, we hope a lot of people take advantage of it.

Andy Thornton, CEO of the Greater Peoria Family YMCA, Bob Seneff, CEO of Graham Health System and also a new WTVP board member.

Welcome.

- Thank you.

- Dick Taylor with the Elmwood Community Foundation.

We look forward to keeping up with this and getting some updates.

Thanks for coming on.

- Thank you very much.

- Thank you.

- Phil Luciano joins us now.

Great opportunity for folks in that Tri-County area to not travel as far.

- And the other thing about this, and can't touch on everything, right, but the one thing that impresses me, you've got a lot of towns around Elmwood, itself in nice town, we got Yates City and Oak Hill and Trivoli, all nice, affordable places, but there's not one like unifying thing.

It's not just a health and wellness center, it's a social hub.

You know, you live around there or you're thinking about moving to the area and you see all of a sudden this big old, you know, health and wellness center, there's a reason to live there, and in turn that can spur a lot of economic development.

You know, people moving in, businesses wanna come in.

It sounds like a great project.

- Yeah, and even, you know, for senior citizens, great place to be.

I mean, you don't have to travel so far to go to the doctor and place for them to gather, have a cup of coffee and hang out.

What do we got coming up next on "You Gotta See This"?

- You know, as a former food reviewer, I still get this following question: where to go in central Illinois for a pork tenderloin sandwich?

So the crack investigative team of "You Gotta See This" went out through all of the well-known pork tenderloin sandwich joints in all of the area, and we weighed 'em.

We actually brought a scale.

You want a big one?

You're gonna wanna see this episode.

(Phil laughs) - Sounds good to me.

Let's head out.

Thank you for joining us.

We appreciate it.

You can find us@wtvp.org and on Facebook and Instagram.

(uplifting music) Have a good night.

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