Editor’s Note: This story is the latest in a long series of articles in The Beachcomber about Vashon history by local historian Bruce Haulman and photographer Terry Donnelly.

News of the sale of the former Vashon Community Care (VCC) facility to the Seattle Indian Health Board gives islanders an opportunity to reflect on the history of the property and its century-long role as an island rehabilitation center.

The property has gone through numerous transformations over the past nearly 100 years — beginning as a working ranch, becoming a boarding house and farm for the poor during the Great Depression, transitioning to a nursing home, and then a community-supported care center, and now to a rehabilitation center, brought to the island by a Native health care provider and rooted in Native cultural practices.

P.E. Ellsworth originally purchased the property along what is now Vashon Highway in 1908; built the farmhouse, barns and other outbuildings; and named it the Ellsworth Ranch. Ellsworth leased the property to the Carnation Company in 1918, which operated the farm until 1925, when The Exchange Club of Seattle purchased the farm and gave it to Goodwill Industries.

The Goodwill Farm operated as a working farm to provide, according to the Seattle Daily News, “employment and a program of rehabilitation for men and women in need of such help” — becoming an important support for the displaced as the Great Depression took hold and deepened during the1930s.

In late October 1927, Reverend Vereide called together 20 islanders at the farm and asked for their help to organize an operating board of directors for the Goodwill Farm. L.C. Beall was elected president, P. Monroe Smock was elected secretary, and this “Halloween Miracle” ensured the continued success of the Farm with the support of islanders.

Leon and Nell Hebert purchased the farm for $10,000 in 1944 and renamed it Hebert’s Boarding House.

The Herberts continued to house many of the men and women who had been residents since the depths of the Depression. Public assistance paid $30 per month for each resident. Tom Hebert, Leon and Nell’s son, who grew up on the farm, described it as fully self-sufficient, with “hogs, draft horses, rabbits, Vashon’s only public stud bull — the famous Boeing Bull — milk cows grazing in the front yard, saddle horses, 1,000 chickens, a huge vegetable garden, and goats, goats, goats.”

The couple gradually transformed the farm into a licensed nursing home and in 1953 changed its name to the Vashon Nursing Home. They continued to operate it until 1957.

Bruce and Dorothy Smith, who purchased the nursing home from the Heberts, renamed it Island Manor Nursing Home and added a new kitchen, a dining room, and the west wing. The barn was demolished in 1963 to create a parking lot, and in the 1970s, Bill Ide purchased the nursing home and added a “Summerfest” BBQ that quickly became an Island Manor tradition.

Mike McIntyre purchased Island Manor in 1977 and added a walking path around the property for residents to use. In 1980, Jim and Judy Alexander bought the facility and undertook a series of renovations that brought the structures up to current building codes.

The Alexanders formed a partnership with Regency Care Centers in the early 1990s, with the intent of building a new facility and opening it in 1994. But a number of factors prevented the plan from being realized and the project was abandoned.

In late 1995, the Alexanders announced they were closing the facility, and in response to the possibility of Regency opening a rehabilitation facility at the Island Manor site, members of the Vashon community rallied to purchase the facility and maintain it as a nursing home.

In an effort led by Ted Kutscher and Ted Claybaugh, 30 islanders pledged loans to guarantee the lease of the property, and within two weeks organized a non-profit to keep the facility operating as a residential facility for seniors. This effort became known as “The Christmas Miracle,” echoing the “Halloween Miracle” of 1927.

Quickly, the new board discovered that an entirely new facility would be needed within five years because of the deteriorated state of the original 1908 building and the new regulations specifying care center facility requirements.

The board took on the challenge and enlisted the cooperation of Providence Health System to purchase the property and plan the construction of a new facility. The new facility was designed to maintain the lines and feel of the original 1908 building.

In August 2001, the new building, with a 40-apartment assisted living facility, a 30-bed nursing home, and a five-day-a-week adult daycare program opened as the Vashon Community Care Center. Providence Mount St. Vincent was contracted to manage the new care center. In 2013, the board changed the facility’s name to Vashon Community Care.

For over 20 years, the agreement between Providence and the care center’s board worked well, but in April 2017, Providence announced they would not renew their contract when it expired in August of that year.

A conflict between Providence and the board, led by Susan Hansen, led to Providence ending the relationship and forced the VCC board to look for a new partner.

This break with Providence marked the beginning of the end for Vashon Community Care. And although it would take nearly five years and a pandemic, this rift ultimately led to the end of VCC as a provider of senior living and skilled nursing care for the island.

Transforming Age began operating the facility in 2017, assuming VCC’s debt and a $6 million HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development) guaranteed loan.

VCC’s board of directors agreed to step down — it would operate under the Transforming Age board but keep its own non-profit status. In 2019, Transforming Age closed the skilled nursing facility, remodeled that area into studio apartments, and announced a $3 million capital campaign for renovations and improvements which never took place.

The next year, the COVID pandemic hit, and the financial stability of care facilities everywhere was battered by the high incidents of care facility COVID deaths and by the economic dislocations, closures, and staffing issues that came with the pandemic.

Vashon Community Care notified residents, families, employees, and the community on September 10, 2021, that they would cease operations by the end of the year. The announcement stated that “VCC operations were no longer sustainable” and cited “an insurmountable staffing shortage.” The closure forced the 36 residents to be relocated and left 42 staff members looking for new employment.

When Transforming Age announced it would close the VCC facility, a community task force was created to advise Transforming Age on future uses of the building.

Fourteen islanders, including representatives from Vashon HouseHold, Vashon Health Care District, Vashon Senior Center, Vashon Youth & Family Services, and other community members, quickly decided that Transforming Age did “not require the collective involvement of the task force in any substantive official way” and resigned as a group en masse on November 3, 2021.

As VCC was closing, other Vashon organizations including Vashon HouseHold, Sea Mar Community Health Centers, and Vashon Health District visited the site.

Vashon HouseHold, which seeks to provide affordable housing on the rapidly gentrifying island, ultimately announced that remodeling to accommodate affordable housing was not feasible without a partner using other parts of the facility.

When Sea Mar and the Vashon Health Care District were working together, they considered the VCC facility as a possible alternative site to Vashon’s Sunrise Ridge healthcare clinic. But Sea Mar, too, decided that the cost of remodeling the building to meet the needs of an efficient primary care clinic for the island was not feasible.

“Sea Mar had recently tried to repurpose a nursing home on the mainland into a clinic plus units of low-income housing, but in the end, had to bulldoze that project after two years due to irreparable inefficiencies in the building layout,” said Tom Langland, chair of the Health Care District.

The building sat empty for over a year until the Seattle Indian Health Board announced in early April of this year that they would purchase the facility to create a regional inpatient substance abuse center rooted in Native cultural practices.

It is early days yet to know how this potential new life for this historic care site along Vashon Highway will develop.

But the history of this site is deeply linked to its role as a rehabilitation and care facility over the past 100 years. That role will continue as the Seattle Indian Health Board carries on the tradition of this site as a place of healing and recovery.