Village of Manor Park acquires Friendship Living Centers from Aurora

West Allis-based The Village of Manor Park has acquired Friendships Living Centers from Milwaukee-based Aurora Health Care.
Friendship Living Centers, 7300 W. Dean Road, Milwaukee, includes Friendship Village, an independent, assisted living and skilled nursing facility, and Freedom Village, an independent living townhome community.
Friendship Living Centers has about 300 total living units, including 80 beds for long term care.
"We’re very pleased and excited about having a physical presence and extending our health care services to the northwest side of Milwaukee," said Dr. Reginald Hislop III, president and chief executive officer of The Village at Manor Park. "Our purpose as a leader in senior health care is to provide health and lifestyle services to meet the needs of older adults. Adding Friendship Living Centers fits in very well with our mission to reach out to seniors in the larger community."
Even before the acquisition, The Village of Manor Park was the largest provider of senior health care to exclusively seniors in the state, said Tom Henley, community relations outreach director for The Village of Manor Park.
The Village of Manor Park’s main campus in West Allis has 270 independent living apartments, 150 long-term care beds and 148 assisted living beds. The company also operates the 32-bed Greenville Manor assisted living facility near Appleton, the 27-bed Ruth Hospice at North 85th Street and Mill Road in Milwaukee and the 10-bed Ruth Hospice at South 82nd Street and Beloit Road in Milwaukee.
In addition, the company owns a 51-percent share of Home Care Medical, which sells durable medical equipment in New Berlin.
The addition of Friendship Living Centers gives The Village of Manor Park a major presence on the north side of the metropolitan Milwaukee area. The additional location on the north side of the metro area will expand the number of potential residents for the company, because new nursing home residents typically want to live near their homes, Henley said.
"It gives us a presence on the north side we didn’t have before," he said.
Henley said Aurora approached The Village of Manor Park to see if it was interested in acquiring Friendship Living Centers.
William Lange, president of Friendship Living Centers, said the transaction enables Aurora to focus its resources on other senior services that include acute care for the elderly, elder case management and other programs provided by the Visiting Nurse Association of Wisconsin and Village Adult Services.
Henley said no major changes are planned at Friendship Living Centers.
"Other than a name change, potentially," he said. "That’s something we haven’t settled on yet. We’re not buying a hardware store. We’re literally taking over someone’s home. So, we have to do this very carefully. We will try to keep the status quo as much as possible."
Henley said Village of Manor Park will consider other acquisitions.
"Nothing’s out of the question," he said. "But, I don’t think there’s anything on the front-burner right now."
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. A spokesman for Aurora Health Care could not be reached for comment.
Editor’s note: This story was originally reported in the BizTimes Daily e-mail bulletin, a service of Small Business Times. To sign up for the free daily report of Wisconsin business news, visit www.biztimes.com/daily.
September 17, 2004, Small Business Times, Milwaukee, WI