Navigator Homes, a 26-acre nursing home complex, celebrated the completion of its facility on Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Wednesday afternoon.
About 150 people, including many of the home’s elderly tenants, gathered beneath the heat without shade to take in speeches by officials involved in the facility’s construction project.
The facility replaces the Windemere Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Oak Bluffs, which had been the only nursing home on the Island. The center was operated by the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.
Navigator Homes consist of 48 units of housing for residents as well as 76 bedrooms for hospital staff. The project cost a total of $68 million to complete, with funding from both community donations and government funding.
Navigator Homes Board President Lou Woolf declared the occasion as a “celebration of home.”
“Home certainly should be located where the heart is, particularly for people in their later years,” Woolf said. “This place is one where Island seniors will receive compassionate, person-centered care without having to leave their Island, remaining connected to the people, the places, the sights, the smells, the rhythm of the island that they love so very much.”
Martha’s Vineyard Hospital purchased the land for the project from Bradford A. Norton and Philip J. Norton III for $3.6 million in 2021. Their father, Philip J. (“Jeffrey”) Norton Jr., was the previous landowner, who couldn’t access care at Windemere. As a result, he had to seek care in New Bedford and died at the Vineyard hospital in 2022 from pulmonary issues.
Prior to his death, Norton Jr. was in the process of planning the nursing home’s development with the hospital.
Retired MV Hospital President Denise Schepici expressed her pride in the project’s completion.
“Here we are Jeff. We did it, phase two,” Schepici said. “I’m so proud to be a part of the team that put this idea together and to see it come to fruition today, and for many, many years to come.”
Norton Jr. was also the namesake of the Phillip J. Norton House, one of two named residential buildings on the complex that were unveiled at the ceremony. The other was Founders House.
Standing with his mother, Jane, Norton III expressed his family’s sense of pride.
“It’s an honor and it’s very humbling to see our name on a building here at Navigator Homes but for myself and my brother and our mom, it’s a very proud moment for us,” he said.
Tara Gregorio, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Senior Care Association, acknowledged the contributions of Navigator Homes Secretary Melinda Loberg, Treasurer Polly Brown, and Cofounder Paddy Moore.
“Your leadership reflects the very best of community-centered innovation that we can achieve together,” Gregorio said. “Your commitment to ensuring that older, cherished adults can remain on Martha’s Vineyard, supported by their neighbors and connected to the place they call home, is profoundly inspiring to us all.”
State Sen. Julian Cyr, who represents the Cape & Islands, highlighted steps taken by the state legislature in supporting elderly care facilities. Some of these initiatives include State Rep. Thomas Moakley’s earmarking of $3.8 million in the state’s budget for Navigator Homes and the passage of legislation meant to improve oversight and quality standards at long-term care and assisted living facilities, which was approved by Gov. Maura Healey in 2024.
“It is so exciting to see this day come and I’m looking forward to many more visits, many happy memories here,” Cyr said. “The course the Island is charting here with this small-scale skilled nursing is really a model for the whole nation.”
