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If Larry Vander Maten were to run Explore Park the way he runs his nursing home business, this much seems clear: Explore will expand. Vander Maten, who has steered his St. Louis-based nursing home management company through years of growth, is scheduled to be in Roanoke today to discuss his plans for Explore. Although details are scarce, the terms of a proposed 50-year lease would allow Vander Maten to radically transform the living history park into a "destination resort." Vander Maten wants to invest at least $20 million in ventures that could include a hotel, restaurants, stores, an amphitheater and a water park. Those who know Vander Maten say the same business acumen he used to build a chain of 14 nursing homes could be the salvation for a park with an uncertain financial future. "If you can get Larry Vander Maten interested in pursuing a project, I can't think of anyone better to make it work. Maybe Donald Trump," said business associate Darrell Hoefling of Iowa. In 1997, Ernst & Young named Vander Maten health care Entrepreneur of the Year for the St. Louis region for his successes with HSM Management and Rosewood Care Centers, the companies he created to manage his nursing homes. A graduate of the University of Iowa, Vander Maten started out in the 1970s as a certified public accountant for a family-owned business in Fort Dodge, Iowa, said Michael Brady, director of administrative services for HSM. Some of his clients were nursing homes, and Vander Maten developed an interest in the field that led him to buy two homes. Those acquisitions led to eight more. In the mid-1980s, Vander Maten sold his holdings to a larger chain and began to build his own nursing homes, Brady said. Today, 13 Rosewood Care Centers are scattered throughout Illinois. One is in Missouri. Now semiretired, Vander Maten lives in Longwood, Fla. He travels to St. Louis about once a month to tend to nursing home business, Brady said. Reached at his home Monday, Vander Maten, 58, declined to comment on his plans for Explore until he arrives in Roanoke. He is expected to appear at a public meeting at 7 tonight at the Blue Ridge Parkway Visitors Center at Explore.
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For some time now, Vander Maten has been looking for ways to parlay an interest in Western history into his latest business venture. "He is enamored with Western history," Hoefling said of his business partner. "He goes to dude ranches. He rides a horse. It's one of his hobbies." Five years ago, Vander Maten formed the nonprofit group Western Living Histories. Although the group's mission is to educate the public about historic events of the Old West, filings with the Internal Revenue Service show about $70,000 in assets and no significant expenditures. Last year, after Vander Maten began to eye Explore, he changed the organization's name to Virginia Living Histories. Vander Maten had originally hoped to build a Western-oriented family vacation spot in Colorado, according to Dale Wilkinson, a Roanoke Valley real estate developer who has known him for years. But the events of Sept. 11, 2001, changed those plans, Wilkinson said. To accommodate tourists more inclined to take shorter trips, Vander Maten shifted his focus to the East Coast. "People want a vacation within their drive time," Wilkinson said. "As I understand it, he will be taking the Old West concept and bringing it to within a drive-time of two-thirds of the U.S. market." Wilkinson had ties to Vander Maten long before Explore entered the picture. The two men met about 15 years ago over a business dinner at the Charleston Manor retirement community in Maryland. Vander Maten served on the home's board of directors; Wilkinson was working with its director on real estate ventures. As they got to know each other, Wilkinson ended up helping Vander Maten look for nursing home sites for his growing business back in Illinois. That in turn led to trips to Colorado, where they scoped out possible locations for Vander Maten's dream of a Western-theme park. Once the terrorist attacks led Vander Maten to shift his attention to the East Coast, he and Wilkinson continued to meet and discuss possible park locations. By then, Wilkinson said, he was not working for the nursing home developer in an official capacity or as a fellow investor. Last year, Vander Maten flew into Roanoke to meet with Wilkinson and check out a site near the Greenbrier resort. The two men picked up a newspaper at the airport before hitting the road. That day's paper happened to have an article about Explore's troubled finances, Wilkinson said. They were soon talking about Explore, and decided to take a look at the site that day. The more they talked about the 1,155-acre park on the edge of the Blue Ridge Parkway in Roanoke County, the more they liked the idea. Wilkinson began to introduce Vander Maten to some members of Explore's board. The ensuing discussions have led to a proposed lease that would turn control of the park over to Vander Maten for the next five decades. With Vander Maten giving few details about his plans for Explore, it's unclear if he intends to preserve the park's existing historical components, which include a re-created 18th-century frontier farm and other buildings.
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While Vander Maten's supporters point to his track record as a nursing home operator as evidence of what he could do for Explore, those operations have not been trouble-free. Since 2000, the Illinois Department of Health has cited Rosewood facilities for nine serious violations and issued more than $50,000 in fines against five of the 13 homes in the state. Two of the violations involved resident deaths. In February, state inspectors determined that the staff at Rosewood Care Center of Peoria failed to properly monitor a woman with a history of falls. The woman was found dead in her room, her head lodged tightly between the mattress and bed rail, according to the health department. In 2000, the same facility was cited for failing to monitor the condition of a 77-year-old man who suffered a head injury from a fall. More than eight hours after the fall and five hours after his condition began to deteriorate, the man was taken to a hospital, where he died of a brain hemorrhage, according to health department records. Other serious violations at Rosewood homes involved nonfatal incidents. One resident was found lying in a pool of blood in a driveway. Another wandered off and was found 10 hours later in a ravine, suffering from hypothermia and dehydration. Given the number of Rosewood facilities and the span of five years, nine infractions does not seem to indicate a serious performance record, according to Pam Comstock, director of legislation and communications for the Illinois Health Care Association, a trade group that includes Vander Maten among its members. Brady also defended his company's record. "Compared to the industry in general, I think we run a very, very quality operation," he said. The founder of Nursing Home Monitors, an Illinois-based, nonprofit group, had a less flattering assessment. Violette King said that she witnessed problems at a Rosewood facility while in training as a certified nursing assistant - an experience that played a role in her later becoming an advocate for nursing home residents and their families. "I have been forced to recommend them to people because most of the places are so much worse," King said of Rosewood homes. The company has a reputation for mounting a fierce defense to any violation found by state inspectors or any allegation made in lawsuits, King said. That sentiment was shared by the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals when it dismissed a lawsuit filed against a Rosewood home under the federal racketeering statute. The appellate court chastised both sides in the case for what it called a "scorched earth model" of litigation in the 13-year dispute. Despite the bitter feud, the man who filed the lawsuit on behalf of his mother had nothing bad to say about his legal adversary when contacted at his Florida home. Vander Maten is "a likable, successful - extremely successful - businessman," said Robert Corley, a former business professor at the University of Illinois. "My advice to you is that if he wants to pour a bunch of money into Virginia, take it." |
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