Nick Seibel, editor and publisher of the Silver City Daily Press, covers top stories each week on the Silver City Report. This week, the New Mexico Game Commission acquires land for a wildlife management area, Gila Regional Medical Center buys a clinic to expand services and a new age-in-place assisted living is getting started, and more.
Susan Morée:
The state Game Commission is acquiring some land in the Mimbres Valley. What's going on there?
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, it's a pretty good chunk of land, about 11,000 acres in the Mimbres Valley. And it's the second largest wildlife management area in the southwest corner of the state. A lot of conservationists and outdoors people are pretty excited about it. And they're working to push the Game Commission to come up with a really good management plan for the property, it’s with some other really important state land and other outdoor property out there. So they think it could potentially be a really big deal for the whole region, both in terms of outdoor tourism and in getting local people and young people in particular into the outdoors.
Susan Morée:
And Gila Regional Medical Center has acquired some property as well. What's going on there?
Nick Seibel:
Silver Care is a longtime medical clinic here in Silver City. It was originally founded and owned for many years by a physician in the community, but Silver Healthcare ended up selling a couple of years ago to a larger corporate operator. The physician that owned the clinic, kept the real estate, and now he's turned around and sold that real estate to Gila Regional Medical Center, which is, of course, our county-owned hospital here in Grant County. So, the main clinic on 32nd Street, the hospital is the just going to be a landlord for the new owners of Silver Healthcare. They'll continue to operate in that space. But there's a second clinic building that used to be the Silver Healthcare Family Clinic next to the Grant County Administration Building. The hospital bought that, which is not currently in use. And they have plans to start their own, basically, family care practice there, as well as a new urgent care clinic. And so that's pretty centrally located, a lot of folks looking forward to that kind of facility. And it's a space that Gila Regional at least has not been in before. So looking forward to seeing what that means. Hopefully something that's overall going to strengthen the hospital and the whole healthcare ecosystem here in the area.
Susan Morée:
You have a happy story for us about an assisted living that's coming to Silver City. Tell us about that.
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, it's a different sort of assisted living. It has its roots in an effort that goes back 15 years or more. It was a group called the Bridge Community and they founded a nonprofit. They actually bought some property west of Silver City, and they had aspirations of building an actual physical building where there could be care for seniors at various stages of aging, giving them as much independence as possible, and sort of allow them to stay in the community as they age and have more intense care needs. Unfortunately, they couldn't raise the money to build utilities out to the site. There were just lots of issues, and that effort never really came together. So, the nonprofit organization still existed, though, and a new group of folks have sort of taken that on, and they've got sort of a new vision. They're calling it now the Bridge Village, and the idea is to get a network of folks across the community that can help seniors age in place. So rather than building a physical space for people to move into, the idea is to build a network of resources to let older folks stay in their homes. They can help them do the things that maybe they can't otherwise do as they age. So, they’ve been building that volunteer network and have already had a couple of beginning trainings for those volunteers and 26 folks have already signed up to assist in that effort. So pretty exciting and hopefully something that will really fill a need for older folks here in Grant County.
Susan Morée:
Yeah, and I think a lot of people want to age in place.
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, it's one of the challenges of living in a rural area like this is that, there's a certain point where there just aren't the resources to allow you to be able to stay around and folks move into larger places and they can help bridge that gap, appropriating their name there. I think it's something that's going to be welcomed by a lot of folks here in the community.
Susan Morée:
And where can readers find these stories, Nick?
Nick Seibel:
You can find us online 24/7 at scdailypress.com.
Susan Morée:
All right, thanks so much.
Nick Seibel:
Have a great one.