WESTBROOK – Experts on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia agree that a new facility planned in Westbrook will help address a growing problem among the elderly, both in Maine and nationwide.

Members of the Westbrook Planning Board, as well as invited abutters, are doing a site walk on Saturday starting at 9 a.m. at 449 Stroudwater St., to see where Sandy River Co., a Portland-based firm that develops property for the health-care industry, wants to build a $13 million, 50-bed memory-care facility for patients with Alzheimer’s and related diseases.

The board plans to hold a public hearing on the project at its next meeting on March 20.

The new project is a departure from the original 2007 proposal to build a senior housing complex on the property, according to Planning Board Chairman Edward Reidman.

“The plans have changed dramatically from where they were,” he said.

Despite the revamp, Reidman said, there have been no major conflicts with the board over the project so far.

“The board has been very cordial to the developer,” Reidman said this week.

Sandy River Co. owns 63.4 acres at 449 Stroudwater St., near the Animal Refuge League of Greater Portland. The parcel is already home to Springbrook, a 146-unit nursing care and assisted living complex, which opened in 1992.

The company was prepared to add a new 55-plus elderly housing complex, but by 2007, it was clear that the market for that kind of housing had all but disappeared, according to Daniel J. Maguire, managing partner at Sandy River.

In September 2011, Maguire and the company went back to the board with a new, retooled proposal to instead build what he calls a “memory-care” facility, which is in response to what he said is a problem on the rise.

“We just feel that there’s an increased need for care for people with memory issues,” he said.

Laurie Trenholm, executive director of the Maine Chapter of the National Alzheimer’s Association, agrees.

“There is not a huge number of (memory care) facilities, not at all, and that, frankly, is the worry,” she said.

Trenholm said one of the biggest risk factors for Alzheimer’s and related conditions is age. Starting at 65, the risk begins to grow, reaching as high as 50 percent for Americans age 85 or older.

Trenholm said this fact is alarming when one considers that baby boomers – more than 70 million people – are now beginning to enter the higher-risk age groups. Today, she said, there are an estimated 37,000 people suffering from Alzheimer’s and related disorders in Maine, and by 2030, that number is expected to be more than 55,000.

Even today, Trenholm said, many residential-care facilities are full, with patients on waiting lists to get in. It’s not uncommon, she said, for some patients to wait up to a year, and that’s with an estimated 75 percent of the state’s patients being cared for at home by a family member.

“We’re going to have a real issue,” she said. “There just aren’t enough beds for the need.”

If the proposed Sandy River facility receives Planning Board approval, the new building will be named Avita of Westbrook. The name and overall design, Maguire said, is based on a similar facility the company was involved in building in Needham, Mass.

Gerry Gallin, the executive director there, said the facility opened on May 13, 2011, and by September had 32 residents.

Gallin said baby boomers today are far more likely to see Alzheimer’s and dementia conditions in older relatives than in themselves, but that will change within the next couple of decades.

“It’s going to start to hit,” she said.

Trenholm said she welcomes any new initiative to bring more memory-care services to Maine. Most people suffering from the disease, Trenholm said, manifest its effects differently and at different rates.

“It’s habilitation, helping people work with what they have,” she said.

A 50-bed memory-care facility in Westbrook would be located on part of Sandy River Co.’s 63-acre parcel between Spring and Stroudwater streets, behind Springbrook nursing home, viewed here from Spring Street, which the company also owns.  The Planning Board will walk the site Saturday. (Staff photo by Sean Murphy)