Evergreen Senior Living’s plans to relocate to a new facility have started to take shape after Johnson County severed its long-time financial support of the nursing home last year.
The senior living community will instead move to a site near College Boulevard and Ridgeview Road in Olathe, and, as part of a collaboration with Midland Care Connection, Inc., open a new senior health and living-oriented campus.
The plan, per Olathe city documents, is to build a 25,500-square-foot medical office and clinic space at College and Ambassador Street, where Midland Care will provide services for the federally administered Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly, or PACE.
Two lots over, Evergreen plans to build a 200,000-square-foot multi-building complex with assisted living, skilled nursing and retirement homes on site.
The Olathe Planning Commission on Monday voted 6-0 to recommend approval of the two separate rezoning requests and preliminary site development plans for the joint project. Commissioners Wayne Janner, Megan Lynn and Ken Chapman were absent.
Commissioner Chip Corcoran said he sees the Evergreen project as “something that the community needs.”
Johnson County supported Evergreen for years
Evergreen Living Innovations — a nonprofit that managed the Evergreen community in Johnson County’s Health Services Building near 119th Street and Ridgeview Road in Olathe — had an agreement with the county dating back to the early 2000s.
Under the original contract, Evergreen received $800,000 from the county annually, which helped subsidize its operations.
That agreement would have ended in 2027, but last year, the county commission voted to end it in 2026 instead and pay out the remaining $3.8 million the county owed under the agreement.
The decision to sever the agreement a year early came, in part, due to the current Evergreen building’s general disrepair, which led the county to slate the structure for demolition instead of sinking more cash into costly renovations.
In the new agreement, Johnson County agreed to pay up to $23.8 million to Evergreen to help it relocate and become a self-sufficient operation. The bulk of that money is contingent on Evergreen meeting certain milestones.
New Evergreen community will have 180+ senior living units
- Evergreen’s new senior living community will have a total of 183 units when completed.
- That will include a one-story facility for assisted living and skilled nursing.
- There will also be multiple independent living options on the campus, including a three-story structure attached to the primary facility as well as a detached three-and-a-half-story building and three single-story townhome structures.
- Evergreen plans to build its new senior living campus in three phases, starting with the primary facility with the assisted living and skilled nursing, according to city documents.
Evergreen will have to make changes on final site plan
To ultimately get a final site development plan for the Evergreen development — a key step required for actually building a project — the applicant will need to make some changes to the plan.
That’s because, under the building material standards in Olathe’s Unified Development Ordinance, Evergreen plans to use too much of some of the materials the city considers substandard, said Planner Taylor Vande Velde. Typically, a building can only use the lowest class of building materials for trims and accents in low quantities, no more than 5% on building facades.
Some of the buildings planned in Evergreen’s development use up to 48% of what Olathe considers the lowest class of building materials on facades. In this case, the chief concern is that some of the siding treatments selected are more combustible, more prone to warping and more susceptible to damage from pests, Vande Velde said.
The planning commission’s recommendation for approval for the Evergreen part of the larger project comes with a stipulation to change the design elevations to fit in with Olathe’s building material standards in subsequent applications. Vande Velde said city staff have recommended a “higher-quality” building material that “has the same look.”
Next steps:
- Both sets of rezoning and preliminary site development plans are headed to the Olathe City Council on March 19 for consideration.
- Then, Evergreen and Midland will have to submit final site development plans.
- To receive the final tranche of the $23.8 million Johnson County promised in support of Evergreen’s relocation efforts, the nonprofit has to have a building permit and proof of necessary financing by the end of August.
- Regardless, Evergreen has to vacate its current facility on Johnson County’s Sunset Drive complex by Aug. 1, 2026.
Looking back: Johnson County ends contract with Evergreen nursing home
