EMERSON—The vacant nursing home on 3 1/2 prime acres at 70 Main St. might soon be ready for rejuvenation.
After 83 years in the borough, and on the cusp on expansion, on Easter Sunday 2021 the Armenian Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Center, citing the pandemic’s economic toll, closed its doors and transferred remaining residents to other nursing homes. The facility is a stone’s throw from the Borough Hall and prominent by its large memorial to the Armenian Genocide, suffered in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
An ANRC website does not appear to have been updated since the facility’s closure that April.
In the years since, the property has lain unoccupied, and a source of speculation. That continues today, but with more optimism: Some local officials we spoke with on the subject said they prefer not to be quoted but that they anticipate an application for a new assisted living facility on the site by this spring or summer.
Some said it would likely be a “continuum of care” facility proposed, offering rehabilitation, assisted living, nursing home, and memory care services in apartments.
We reached out for comment to the home’s owners, and their attorney at RivkinRadler in Hackensack, but did not hear back by press time.
Hopes pinned on home’s renewal in Emerson
In January 2023, Mayor Danielle DiPaola told us she believed that the Armenian Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Center’s owners would be submitting a proposal for a new, state-of-the-art facility on the local site. She also said then they would likely meet with neighbors to discuss the proposal. That evidently did not come to pass.
From the outside, observers note that the property, which included 85 beds, appears well maintained, with common areas and grounds apparently ready for use.
In mid-2019, we reported that the owners of the Armenian Nursing Home had embarked on “exciting expansion plans” to combine two nursing homes, including one in New York, into a joint venture at the Emerson facility.
This venture, as previously reported in The Armenian Mirror Spectator, would have created a new non-profit company, and possibly included Hackensack Meridian Health Network to be the developer and manager of the new facility. These plans, too, did not come to fruition.
Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day
Bergen County Executive James Tedesco III and County Commissioners will hold a ceremony to commemorate Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day on Monday, April 22, at 12:30 p.m. on the Bergen County Courthouse Green. The ceremony will “remember the victims and survivors of the Genocide, and honor the strength and resilience of the Armenian people,” county officials said.
A large stone memorial plaque outside the Armenian nursing home reads, “In memory of the 2 million Christian Armenians massacred by the Turks, 1915–1918.”
