URBANA — Advocates for Aging Care was founded two years ago to address a need for skilled-nursing beds in Champaign County following the closure of three local nursing homes.

Steering committee Chair Cathy Emanuel said Tuesday that while this problems still looms large — state health officials estimate that the county only has about 60 percent of the capacity it needs — a new facility to help fill the gap has just received funding from the state and could be complete in two years.

Advocates for Aging Care will receive a $500,000 allocation in the state budget, with organization officials crediting state Sen. Paul Faraci, D-Champaign, for securing the funds through his advocacy for the project.

“For many of us, this issue is deeply personal,” Faraci said during a press conference at the Bennett Administrative Center in Urbana. “My own mother, my grandmother experienced challenges with limited dignity and quality of care in their later years. Every person deserves respect and compassion. And today we have the opportunity to rewrite that story. … This community has the will, the talent and the courage to lead the way.”

The appropriation comes from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity’s Build Illinois Fund and includes $200,000 for land-acquisition expenses and $300,000 for capital improvements, Advocates for Aging Care said.

Emanuel told The News-Gazette that the total cost of the project will likely be about $20 million.

“We’re working with some people who might be willing to put in that money, but we are going to be probably trying to raise $3 million to $5 million locally,” she said.

Advocates for Aging Care is also looking for a 10- to 12-acre site for the project. Emanuel said the organization plans to break ground in 2026 and have a facility open by 2027.

“We’re talking to a couple different developers right now,” she said. “We haven’t got a final decision, but we’re getting pretty close. So again, from our perspective, it’s more than a theory at this point.”

In discussing the need for more skilled-nursing-care beds, Emanuel said that the Illinois Department of Public Health has estimated that Champaign County needs 700 skilled-nursing beds, but the county only has about 400 at present.

According to Advocates for Aging Care, skilled-nursing facilities provide “nursing and therapy care that can only be performed by a licensed professional.”

“Skilled-nursing stays may be short or long-term; short-term stays may be part of a Medicare benefit; long-term stays may be private pay or covered via Medicaid,” the organization said.

The new nursing home is expected to serve 100-plus residents, with Emanuel noting that this “won’t meet our whole gap, but it will get us started.” She also said that this project presents an opportunity to lead the way in “innovative” care.

In addition to Faraci, state Reps. Carol Ammons, D-Urbana, Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, and Brandun Schweizer, R-Danville, also spoke at the press conference, as did Brian Zilm, district director for U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Springfield.

“This will be solved the same way the (Mahomet) aquifer was just solved, in a bipartisan fashion,” Rose said.

Officials from the University of Illinois and Carle Health also voiced their support for the project. Both entities are part of a broad “community collaborative” working with Advocates for Aging Care to address the issue.

Ammons said the new facility presents an opportunity to make up for Champaign County’s decision to sell its nursing home to University Rehab Real Estate LLC for $11 million in 2019.

“We can track what has happened since that point,” she said. “That was a decision. It was a policy. We have an opportunity right now, as policy- and decision-makers, to reverse what has happened to our community as a result of that.”

The facility, whose name was changed to University Rehabilitation Center of C-U after the sale, closed in spring 2023, and the property was sold to Ayodhya Dham Urbana LLC for $1.5 million in November 2024.

Dipak Patel, a managing member of the LLC, said in a previous interview that the group was “interested” in working with nursing-home operators but did not have “any concrete plans with the building.”

County Executive Steve Summers has said that, based on what he has been told by the Illinois Department of Public Health, reopening the property as a nursing home would not be feasible without “significant retrofitting of the building.”