By NICK VLAHOS
For The Weekly Post
WILLIAMSFIELD – One existing building in Williamsfield has become the site of 16 new addresses. Scott Perkins and Bobby Brown hope that leads to at least 16 new residents.
The husband-and-wife team are the owners of Country Aire Senior Manor, a new independent-living facility along Illinois Route 180. The new owners purchased the building earlier this year for about $200,000 from the village, which received it last year by donation.
For Brown and Perkins, it sounds like it was love at first sight.
“We didn’t even make it into the building and I told her, ‘We’re buying this place,’” Perkins said. “I knew as soon as we pulled in. I said, ‘Unless we walk in here and I see something completely different than what the outside tells me, we’re buying this place,’ And we did.”
Not to say all was perfect. Brown and Perkins have been upgrading an almost-40-year-old building that was a retirement center-turned-group home. Among the upgrades was the addition of 16 new mailboxes, one for each room. Each mailbox required an address.
The new owners suggested that process was laborious. U.S. Postal Service officials had to sign off on it, as did Knox County officials. Perhaps that’s why, while Brown and Perkins were providing a recent tour, they appeared to take particular pride in the gleaming mailboxes protruding from a vestibule wall.
“We had to go get addresses, but it’s worth it,” said Brown, a Canton-based mortgage banker.
Brown and Perkins believe the entire endeavor is worth it.
The two have been in the rental-and-rehab business for years. That work includes Country Aire apartments in Hanna City, which like the new Billtown facility is for tenants 55 and older. Brown and Perkins were looking to expand that concept at a more-affordable price.
Country Aire in Williamsfield offers three types of rooms – small, medium and large – for monthly rents of $895, $995 and $1,095, respectively. The cost includes utilities but does not include internet or cable television. Common areas include those amenities and a full kitchen. Individual units have kitchenettes.
“I’m able to provide a really good service at a really good price because I got the building at a good price,” said Perkins, a retired Caterpillar Inc. mechanical engineer.
“From a business standpoint, seniors really are phenomenal. What you’ve got to figure out is what they care about. They care about keeping it cheap. They care about survival. They’re just worried about where they’re going to live, essentially until the end of their lives.”
The first Country Aire tenant moved in about two weeks ago, according to Perkins. The building is not staffed 24 hours a day and does not provide medical services, although Graham Health System of Canton operates a clinic in the village.
A local restaurant, Billtown Diner, has agreed to deliver up to three meals a day for residents, at $8.50 per meal. Ladd’s Food Mart in Williamsfield has offered to deliver groceries. Those businesses and services helped convince the new owners to take a chance on the community, Perkins said.
“To me, the town speaks for itself,” he said. “The base is solid in this town. They have everything (my residents) need. I own houses in other places that I drive into town and I’m like, ‘This town is dying. I need to get out of it.’ When I drove into this town, it’s not.”
Those might be encouraging words for Village President Robert Johnson to hear. He and other village officials weren’t sure what they were going to do with the building, although they knew operating it as a retirement facility was beyond their expertise and financial wherewithal.
Devin McLain, a Peoria-based Realtor who has been working with the village, let Brown know the building was available.
“The building wasn’t in our hands very long,” Johnson said. “I was thankful, because the village doesn’t need another building that we own that we can’t use. We were very grateful that these folks came along to take the building off the village’s hands and provide this service that’s so badly needed in this area.”
That gratefulness appears to be mutual.
“I want to fill the place up and provide a place that’s great for the town,” Perkins said. “Obviously, we’re capitalists. We’re trying to make an income along the way, too. But at the end of the day, I just want this place to thrive, just like our other place is thriving.”
