What’s going on with the former Jewish nursing home at 78th and Holmes in KC? | Hudnall
Editor’s note: David Hudnall is exploring stalled projects, vacant buildings, and other Kansas City community mysteries. Suggestions for places to investigate? Email dhudnall@kcstar.com
On Friday, I published a column about neighbors’ frustration with the deteriorating condition of 7801 Holmes Road, the former Shalom Geriatric Center on the southeast edge of Waldo, and the city’s struggle to bring its absentee owners into compliance.
But I learned more about the building than I could fit in that column.
According to the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, the building was constructed in 1950. It had a variety of names over the ensuing decades: Home for the Jewish Aged, Jewish Home for the Aged, Jewish Geriatric and Convalescent Center, Shalom Geriatric Center and Village Shalom.
Just north of the nursing home sat Shalom Plaza Apartments, an independent living complex for older adults. Though they occupied separate buildings, the apartments and nursing home functioned as a single senior living campus for decades.
That ended in 2000, when Village Shalom opened a new campus in Overland Park intended to replace both facilities. The nursing home was sold to Ballantrae Healthcare, while the apartments remained on Holmes Road. Today, the apartments are known as Plaza Apartments; they are a HUD-subsidized housing community.
South Plaza Campus LLC, a company owned by David Ferron, bought the old nursing home in 2011. During his ownership, Ferron won city approval twice — in 2014 and again in 2019 — for master planned redevelopment proposals that envisioned new housing, medical uses and other commercial activity. Neither project moved forward, and both approvals eventually expired.
Ferron sold the building in 2024 to Flint Hills Freedom LLC, which is when the more recent trouble seems to have started. Neighbors said that although the building was not active while under Ferron’s ownership, he kept up the grounds, cutting the grass regularly and keeping lights on around the property.
Under Flint Hills Freedom, a makeshift fence has been erected around the property, the lights have been cut, and the grounds inside are not regularly maintained, neighbors say. They say trespassers now routinely slip through the fence at night, stripping the building for scrap and leaving debris throughout the neighborhood.
Who is Flint Hills Freedom LLC?
State records identify Ashish Jain of Shawnee and Nikolay Shulgin of San Francisco among the people behind Flint Hills Freedom. Jain has appeared on at least one city permit application connected to the property. I emailed Shulgin and did not receive a response.
County records show the new owners borrowed $2.2 million when they purchased the property in September 2024, suggesting the acquisition was financed with at least that much debt. But if the new owners have redevelopment plans, they have not become public.
The most significant recent activity involving the property has instead been a lawsuit against its neighbor.
In April, Flint Hills Freedom sued Plaza MO Preservation, the New York-based owner of the Plaza Apartments. According to the lawsuit, contractors renovating the apartment complex crossed onto the nursing home property, moved a fence and poured concrete, curbs and pavement on Flint Hills Freedom’s land without permission.
Much of the lawsuit revolves around those decades-old agreements signed when the nursing home and apartment complex were still part of the same campus. Flint Hills Freedom argues those agreements have expired and has asked the court to sort out what rights each property owner still has today. The two parties are “already discussing a potential resolution of their dispute,” according to the most recent filing in the case.
Lawyers for Flint Hills Freedom did not respond to my requests for comment.
In the meantime, the city is evaluating the property under its dangerous buildings code and considering whether to pursue receivership, a legal tool that could force action if the owners continue to let the building rot.
