Oakmont’s Semimonthly Newspaper
www.oakmontvillage.com/news
Oakmont Gardens Renovations
Art Faire a Draw
nJim Brewer
Under new ownership and with a lot of enthusiasm, Oakmont Gardens is embarking on ambitious renovations to its apartments as well as dining, meeting and lobby facilities. “We are making some good progress,” said Gardens Executive Director Morgan Holien, who has been at the residential facility since late February. Now owned by a partnership between LCS (Life Care Services of Des Moines, Iowa) and Focus HealthCare Partners of Chicago, Ill., the Gardens has 163 apartments. But owing primarily to recent wildfires and Covid-19, roughly 40 of those units are vacant. That is where the first phase Morgan Holien. of renovations has begun. Those vacant apartments will be getting new flooring, updated kitchens and other new amenities, hopefully by the end of August, Holien said. “We are using the opportunity with all those vacant apartments to bring them up to where in this day and age they really should be.”
July 9, 2022 • Volume 60, Number 13
Oakmont 2030 In Full Swing nMarlena Tremont, Co-chair of the 2030 Committee
The Oakmont Art and Craft Faire shared the Berger Center solar panels’ shade on a hot Saturday afternoon, July 25. Some members of the reconstituted Oakmont Craft Guild even brought tables and chairs to help furnish the space. (Photos by Julie Kiil)
Oakmont 2030, a community-wide conversation about the community’s future, begins on July 15 at 1 p.m. in the Berger Center with the first of four meetings that will look at “Oakmont Today.” The others will be held on Saturday, July 16 for Oakmont members who work, Wednesday, July 20 on Zoom and Thursday, July 21 in-person at the Berger. In August, Oakmont Tomorrow meetings will shift ahead, taking learnings from the July meetings and apply them to a discussion about the future. Oakmont residents are asked to attend one of each kind of meeting. Oakmont 2030 offers a unique meeting platform. It is the first time that members have gotten in on the ground floor of imagining what the Central Complex could look like. Previous efforts at long-range and master planning done by several committees have usually stalled. And in interviews, members of those committees agreed that the biggest reason for ultimate inaction was OVA Board of Director turnover. The Oakmont 2030 Steering Committee hopes to bring about a broad base of agreement that will span boards.
Free Online Card Games, Word Games, and Other Games This is one of a series of articles provided by the Oakmont Technology Learning Center on the use of technology by seniors.
Architectural rendering of new Gardens lobby.
nTina Nerat
Also due for facelifts and other improvements are the main lobby and dining facilities. Other additions include a bistro bar and movie theater space. Details on how and when currently occupied apartments will be renovated are not yet completed, Holien said.
Over the past 2+ years of the ongoing Covid pandemic, many of us have figured out how to exercise our brains online, play games with online apps, and to exercise or socialize with Zoom. The OVA facilities were closed for months in 2020 so books and jigsaw puzzles weren’t available to us. The pandemic is not over yet, so many of us aren’t comfortable yet with in-person games. This article covers some of the online options that have become popular. Card Games. One of the best-known card game sites is trickstercards.com, offering games like Bridge, Pinochle, Spades, Oh Hell, Hearts, and more. Arkadium.com offers card games and more (jigsaw puzzles, word games, crosswords, Mah-Jongg, Sudoku, to name a few). Notably, trickstercards.com does not offer cribbage, but cribbageclassic.com can fill that need. AARP offers a variety of games at games. aarp.org. Some people like to have verbal interaction
See oakmont gardens on page 3
See online games on page 4
Architectural rendering of planned bistro area.
PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID SANTA ROSA, CA PERMIT NO. 323
Matt Zwerling, a volunteer leader takes input from his group at the Town Hall Forum. (Photos by Maureen McGettigan)
Gatherings using the small group model at the June Town Hall Forum.
Oakmont 2030 is also the first time that Community Conversations are being used as a model to develop priorities to inform a long-range plan. The model has shown to be successful in communities worldwide, and was used by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) to reimagine Healdsburg about 20 years ago. Petaluma will use the model this summer to explore its options for the future. Sarah Lightfoot and Todd Erickson, professional facilitators, have been engaged to guide Oakmont through the process over the next several months. Community Conversations puts participants into small facilitated groups to share their views on specific questions. Those answers are recorded, combined with those from other groups and distilled into themes for presentation back to the full group for See oakmont 2030 on page 4