My Grandmother, Amy Raymond, was one of the first residents of the newly built Prairie View Nursing Home. My grandfather, Fred Petrich, mother-in-law, Geneva Horst, and father, Willis Petrich, have all been residents of Prairie View. We were very happy when the Villa was built so we could move Dad back to Sanborn to be close to home and friends. My mother, Joyce Petrich moved to the Manor in 2006 and was very excited to be one of the first to move into the Prairie View Inn this year. All the facilities are kept in great condition and updated frequently to add new services for our senior citizens. The staff, both past and present are dedicated and give very loving care to all the residents. When we visit Praiire View, we usually see staff that have cared for our family memebers over the years and it always brings back good memories.
Scott L. and Norene E. Petrich

Prairie View Campus is a campus of healthcare providing a “Continuum of Healthcare Services.”

It all began with the dream of a group of leaders in the Sanborn community, Al Baldwin, Dr. E.M. Brady, James W. Cravens, Lawrence T. Hickey, Albert Kuiper, Dr. Cornelius Maris, Hubert H. Schultz, Dr. L.J. Sweeney & Sidney VanderWoude-to build a community owned retirement home for its citizens and a home for those needing extra health care.

Sanborn Development Corporation was organized January 20, 1964, incorporated March 13, 1964 and held its first meeting on June 10, 1964.

To begin the project, a fund raiser was held selling shares of stock in the community which most thought of more as a donation rather than shares of stock. The project totaled $367,782 with $73,556 of the monies funded from the sale of those stocks and the other $294,226 borrowed from SBA over a 25 year loan. Five acres of land was purchased from Dr. Robert Scholten for $5,000.

At the time the loan was obtained, the SBA said that Sanborn Development could not build and operate Prairie View Retirement Home, so a new corporation was organized, Prairie View Leasing, to operate the home. Sanborn Development had a nine member board so six more were added to serve on Prairie View Leasing; John Bousema, Sam Elgersma, Clarence Getting, Gerrit Post, Merton Raymond and John C. VanderHaag, for a total of 15 board members.

The first stockholders’ meeting was held October 24, 1966. Prairie View Retirement Home opened with its first resident, Anna Hindegardner, on October 26, 1966. An open house was held for the community on December 10th & 11th, 1966.

Throughout the past years Sanborn Development has used its funds for several different projects within the community and at Prairie View. Some of the projects completed with the generated funds were the building of the Medical Clinic on Main Street, helping subsidize various improvement projects within the home such as replacing the parking lot, purchasing new dressers, nightstands & headboards & other building improvements. Sanborn Development was also responsible for starting Sanborn Housing, a non-profit corporation, operated by some of the same directors, which have built three separate low rent housing units in Sanborn.

Today Prairie View Campus has 120+ employees, with over 702 years of experience from Sanborn and the surrounding communities.

In 1991 Prairie View Leasing constructed, at a cost of $1.25 million, an 18 unit independent living complex, Prairie View Manor. Prairie View Manor consists of 6 double rooms, 12 single rooms, 3 large parlor areas, activity center and dining area. The Manor opened its doors in September of 1992 and is connected to Prairie View Home by an enclosed 13 stall garage.

On April 1, 1999 Prairie View remodeled 6 of its rooms down the East hall and licensed them as Assisted Living. These six rooms were given the name of Prairie View Inn and were some of the first Assisted Living units in Northwest Iowa. This new concept of “Assisted Living” had just been founded in Iowa in 1997.

Expanding its services yet again in 1999, Kuiper Villa, Special Care Unit, was opened. With 16 private rooms this project totaled around $700,000. This addition established the facility as one of the topped ranked Alzheimer’s Units in the area with its special layouts and designs enabling & calming individuals whom suffer from the disease.

Another significant event that occurred in 1999 was Prairie View Leasing changing over to a non-profit corporation. This enabled the facility to receive tax deductible funds of which we have received over $129,048 to date. Over the years Prairie View’s “Foundation of Excellence” has actively pursued donations on a yearly basis from its current, past & new donators. The monies collected are used for ongoing projects and building improvements.

At the end of 2000 and beginning of 2001 renovations and new construction of the nurse’s station, dining room, kitchen, front entrance and office area were completed at a cost of over $700,000.

As the concept of assisted living has grown in the past years we felt a need to expand our available services. Prairie View Inn Assisted Living addition, began with ground breaking in the fall of 2007 and was completed opening its doors on July 7, 2008. This $1.8 million dollar addition generated 10 modern apartment units, a dining area, social room, private dining room, front & back patios, lobby and office area all attached to the existing 6 assisted living studios and garage area. It also allowed us the opportunity to service up to 20 more individuals seeking assisted living amenities.

If there is one thing for certain in health care, it is change and change is what we have seen and will continue to see with the services and living environments our customers want. Noting this shift the board set out on yet another addition/re-modeling project in the spring of 2010.

This addition added what is known as our Southeast section of the skilled nursing home and brought to our customers 15 new private rooms, a second spa for bathing, second nurse’s station and a spacious state of the art therapy room. It also allowed us to turn 9 “double occupancy” rooms into “private occupancy” rooms and 4 “triple occupancy” rooms into “double occupancy” rooms. This 2 million dollar addition was completed in June of 2011. The therapy room was designed not only to meet the therapeutic needs of our residents, but an opportunity to provide Outpatient Therapy to the surrounding community. Prairie View partnered with Sanford Sheldon out of Sheldon to allow us to provide physical, occupational and speech therapy to individuals on an outpatient basis; Just another niche in our continuum of care here at Prairie View Campus.

Keeping up with technology Prairie View Home started the journey to “paperless” charting in the winter of 2012 and continued the transition well into 2013. This was a major project requiring re-wiring of the facility, purchase of computers and kiosks for recording data and staff training. It was also a hard transition for us to trust a computer to record all the daily information we record on our residents when we were used to doing it all on paper. Looking back now it would be hard to imagine anything different.

Making sure to stay abreast with current trends, Prairie View Campus set upon a journey to give Prairie View Manor a “face lift”. In the fall of 2014 interior changes began on the complex including a complete makeover of everything from the colors of the walls to new furniture, new flooring & an updated guest room. The facelift also brought the addition of a designated dining room, private dining room & designation of three areas as a library, entertainment/cinema area & a games/billiards space. In conjunction with the re-model the winter of 2017 brought about another change; 4 “studio” rooms were transformed into 2 large “one-bedroom” apartments with enclosed 4 season rooms.

The board and administration of Prairie View Campus continue to look forward in assessing the needs and requests of the seniors in our area and providing them with a place to go to get those needs met whether it be adding on to our campus yet one more time or keeping up with the new technology that is engulfing the healthcare industry.