Hickory Grove: An uncertain future

Continued from previous week

In September 1971, the sanatorium housed 45 patients — just 23 with tuberculosis (TB) — and the county began to make budget cuts to the facility.

The following year began and 91 employees were on the payroll — a number the county hoped to get down to 62 or 65 by the end of the year.

By the end of the year, Hickory Grove was being promoted as an extended care facility, with the chronically ill assigned to one floor.

As the original building was declining, there was talk of razing the 1915 structure.

In 1973, the county board approved the demolition of the building and work to cap off the basement of the structure, as it could still be reached from the tunnel and used for storage.

But the institution’s future still hung in the balance.

While the second building’s future remained a source of discussion for the county board, there was no doubt at the time that the institution would have its place in history.

“You’d be surprised how many families have had someone out at the sanatorium at one time or another,” Wisconsin Sanatorium Trustees Association President and Green Bay Resident Loris Dow.

In June of 1974, Brown County Mental Health Center Inpatient Administrator Lynn Lucia was appointed to head the new Hickory Grove Study Committee to find “recommendations and alternatives” for the facility.

At that time, there were approximately 34 nursing home patients and 15 TB patients.

The study came back the following month with a recommendation to phase the sanatorium out.

By November 1974, the name was changed to Hickory Grove Nursing Home as the county looked for proposals from licensed nursing home administrators to run the home.

However, the facility needed a greater purpose to reduce a $240,000 operational deficit with just 34 patients.

To convert it into an operation that could function at its highest level as a nursing home — a 68-bed skilled nursing facility — would cost $600,000.

The county ultimately decided to close the facility on Aug. 31, 1974.

The following year, the remaining building and 16 acres was sold to Elroy Nero and Raphael Parins, of Green Bay, for use as a supper club/hotel business later noted as the “Playboy Club.”

But, issues with the DNR and the sewage system put that development to a stop.

In 1984, Al Pokel, Jr. purchased the property with plans to develop a veal processing operation.

When that was met with opposition, Pokel refocused on luxury apartments.

“There’s no way they’re going to remodel it,” Brown County Sheriff’s Capt. Frank Tomcheck told the Press-Gazette’s Julie Bell. “It’s just too far gone.”
“Floors are missing in places and elevator shafts are open,” he said.

The windows were also all smashed out and graffiti lined the walls.

The building was torn down in the late 1990s.

The property is now home to Hickory Grove Heights.