Evergreen Retirement Community acquires Kimberly-Clark former Neenah headquarters

Rachel Kroeger

Staff

March 24, 2025

NEENAH – The Evergreen experience is coming to the Fox Valley after the nonprofit retirement community acquired the former corporate headquarters of the Kimberly-Clark Corporation (401 N. Lake St. in Neenah).

Theresa Brockman – VP of marketing and business development at Evergreen Retirement Community – said the assisted living business has been looking for its opportunity to expand into the Fox Valley for roughly eight years.

“It’s been a priority from our board of directors to grow and expand the Evergreen experience to other areas,” she said.

Brockman said Evergreen’s leadership considered several properties throughout that time, but “nothing just seemed to shake out.”

“We had a lot of people scouting for us,” she said. “We worked with several brokers and some other developers in the Valley, and they’d occasionally send us properties.”

It wasn’t until last year, Brockman said, that Evergreen’s President and CEO Ken Arneson was introduced to the 43-acre, 178,004-square-foot Lake Street property – even though it had been on the market since 2020.

“It was kind of random,” she said. “He went up and toured it, came back to me very quickly and (said), ‘All right, I’d like to bring you up there. Let’s go look at this.’”

After Brockman toured the space with Arneson, she said they both could envision what will soon become the second Evergreen Retirement Community location.

“We both saw the vision very quickly once we actually got on the property and realized the opportunity was there,” she said. “So, just knowing the right person at the right time (brought) it together.”

‘It takes a village’

Adapting an existing office building to be senior-living capable, Brockman said, is a project that requires “a variety of people with a variety of expertise coming together to make it happen.”

“We’re working with an architecture firm – AG Architecture,” she said. “They’re out of Wauwatosa, and they specialize in senior living. So they really have a good handle on the regulations and what’s required in the buildings.”

Brockman said the same is true of the contractors Evergreen anticipates hiring once the project is made available for companies to bid on.

“The contractors we’re going to be putting this out to bid on hopefully have some senior living experience under their belt,” she said. “That will definitely bode well in (our) decision-making when selecting a contractor.”

Even as Evergreen begins to conceptualize what the project will look like, Brockman said ensuring the building is up to code is a top priority for everyone involved in the project so far.

“Even conceptually, as we’re talking through ideas, they’ll make sure they’re mentioning how we have to check the code and make sure this is going to be compliant,” she said. “It all comes down to having a team who is familiar with senior living, who can help make those decisions efficiently and accurately.”

Preliminary timeline

Brockman said even while they conducted due diligence prior to purchasing the building, the Evergreen team began planning the project.

“We do have conceptual designs for what we’d like to see on the property,” she said. “Now that we have it purchased, that starts a whole new set of things that we need to complete prior to renovations. So, the timeline is still very much up in the air.”

Before any construction starts, Brockman said Evergreen intends to bring its plan to the community to ensure the desire and need for Evergreen’s services are prevalent.

“We’re bringing it to the market before we even do any construction, just to make sure the market is open to it, is excited about it and is willing to pay the prices that we’re going to need to charge to create this experience,” she said. “So, all of these pieces need to come together before we’ll actually begin construction.”

If all goes according to plan regarding the design, pre-sale and financial procurement for the project, Brockman said Evergreen anticipates construction “tentatively starting late spring to early summer of 2026.”

“We’re looking at about a year before construction (starts),” she said. “There’s a lot of work that has to go into it before we can actually begin construction, and then once we do – because we’re renovating an existing building – construction timelines could really vary as well.”

Brockman estimates that once construction begins, it could take another “18 months to two years” before the facility is move-in ready.

“It could be three, three-and-a-half years before we’re actually ready for any kind of occupancy, but we are working on it and moving forward,” she said.

Facility services

“The biggest difference” between Evergreen’s current facility in Oshkosh and the in-progress facility in the Fox Valley, Brockman said, is that the company’s new location will not offer the “full continuum of care” offered at its Oshkosh facility.

According to Evergreen’s website (evergreenoshkosh.com), the company offers independent and assisted living, long-term care, short-term rehab, skilled nursing and memory care at its Oshkosh location.

“In (the Fox Valley), we are not going to have the long-term skilled nursing, short-term rehab or memory care,” she said. “Now… if there’s an option for that in future phases, (we would) possibly (considering bringing those services to the Fox Valley), but the initial plan is for independent living and assisted living only.”

However, Brockman said Evergreen’s Fox Valley residents will still have access to the full breadth of care offered at the Oshkosh campus via facility-provided transportation.

“Residents who do choose to live on the Fox Valley campus will have access to that skilled nursing and rehab, should they ever need it here on the (Oshkosh) Evergreen campus,” she said. “So, they’ll have that priority access within the continuum, it’ll just be on a different physical campus.”

The Fox Valley location’s close proximity to Evergreen’s existing Oshkosh campus, Brockman said, was a large part of the reason why company leadership looked to that area first when considering expansion.

“We do regular strategic planning, and we created some criteria for what our growth would look like as we pursue opportunities, and one of them was making sure that it was within a certain distance so that Evergreen staff could be accessible on both campuses,” she said. “We wanted it to be close enough that our leadership teams could support both communities and residents on both campuses can go back and forth.”

‘We want their feedback’

Brockman said there is an extensive waitlist at the company’s Oshkosh campus, highlighting the desire for the Evergreen experience and the need for additional senior care facilities in the Northeast Wisconsin region.

However, before the company simply copies and pastes everything to the Fox Valley location, Brockman said Evergreen wants the community’s opinion on the type of facility they’re looking for.

“Just because we know the Boomer demographic (looking for these types of facilities) is growing doesn’t mean they want what we are envisioning,” she said.

In order to truly serve the needs of the Fox Valley, Brockman said Evergreen is seeking community feedback on more than simply the facility itself but the amenities as well.

“Our hope is to bring people in and have conversations about specific amenities within the apartment,” she said. “(For example, we’ll ask,) ‘Do you want laminate countertops (or) do you want a solid surface? Within the activity spaces, would you like to see art rooms or more multipurpose spaces?’ Their feedback (will) really help us create the environments that ultimately they get to live in and experience.”

Though the project has yet to commence, Brockman said Evergreen is already “very excited to bring” its experience into the Fox Valley community.

“Community feedback is going to be of the utmost importance,” she said. “The Village of Fox Crossing has been phenomenal to work with. We’re excited to get to know more people in the City of Menasha as well. So, that’s what the next year will bring – hopefully a lot of community conversations and moving forward.”