A failed northeast Minneapolis nursing home keeps attracting vandals. Neighbors want answers.

“Quick in-n-out, need to go back here again before it gets sealed,” reads the caption on a TikTok video one urban explorer filmed inside a condemned building in northeast Minneapolis: “#abandoned #nursing home.”

In the video, a flashlight glances from graffitied walls to piles of broken glass and breaker panels hanging ajar in a dank basement.

The former nursing home at 2309 Hayes St. NE. has long vexed neighbors who have watched its post-pandemic decline up close. Known as Bethany Care Center, then Twin City Gardens Nursing Home, the facility traded hands among a series of private equity owners while being investigated by the state, leading to its closure in 2022.

Now it sits empty, a magnet for squatters, thrill-seeking TikTokers, copper wire pilfering, illegal dumping, late-night parties and graffiti.

Neighbor Laura Gurda organized a cleanup earlier this month to make the property slightly less unsightly for nearby Pillsbury Elementary School’s summer festival. It was a positive event that activated the block around the shared eyesore, she said, but as soon as they were done, somebody went back and spray-painted a large lewd image.

“The thing that makes this property stand out is that it’s right next to a school, and it’s right next to a park,” Gurda said. “Northeast is a vibrant neighborhood, but then there’s this little space that’s so dangerous.”

The building also happens to be right up the street from where residents vote.

City Council President Elliott Payne said the festering problem of 2309 Hayes has dogged his entire term in office, with residents rightly upset with its deterioration.

This month, the city began installing metal mesh over the openings rather than the usual plywood boards used on other condemned buildings around Minneapolis.

“I’m hoping that’s helping with some of the break-ins, but if the building continues to sit this way, it’s only a matter of time before somebody gets hurt,” Payne said. “And so, we really need to not just secure it, we need to get it back into production so that it’s actively used.”

Hayes Senior Living PropCo LLC owns the building. The named partners in the LLC, Marc Wegh and Philip Friedman, live out of state but have been “very responsive” to city regulators, according to Minneapolis spokesperson Jess Olstad.

She said the owners were nearly done with rehabbing the property when multiple break-ins occurred, all the copper wiring was stripped out and furnishings stolen. They weren’t willing to spend any more money to repair that damage, so the city listed the property in its vacant building registry last June.

“The property owner is currently in the middle of the insurance review process, which includes interviews with multiple individuals and a site visit,” said Olstad. “They’ve tried to auction the property a couple of times but because of the insurance issues, the auctions have been put on hold each time. They are hopeful this process will be resolved in the next month so they can proceed with an auction.”

Last year the city toughened its vacancy policy so that owners of condemned properties can be fined as much as $24,000 a year, up from the previous $7,000.

Wegh and Friedman did not respond to requests for comment.

Many of neighbors’ frustrations stem from watching the building sell to multiple limited liability companies associated with recurring individuals and businesses.

“As much as the company, the firm, has responded when they’ve had to, when they absolutely had to, they really are not responding to the community’s need to have a property that’s safe, attractive, functional,” said Thomas Ebert, Windom Park Citizens in Action staff member.

In 2020, the nursing home received a $378,800 loan under the pandemic-era federal Paycheck Protection Program loan to retain 61 jobs, according to federal records.

But the following year, the Minnesota Department of Health began investigating the facility, which was then owned by PC Hayes Management LLC and doing business as Twin City Gardens.

The state’s receivership petition said nursing home staff reported payroll checks bouncing, unpaid electricity bills and a critically low oxygen supply. The food vendor told investigators the home had a past due balance of more than $40,000. Its history of improper care included one resident developing ulcers and another hospitalized from an infected amputation site.

In response, the building’s then-owner Philip Thompson denied staff members’ allegations that he told them not to order wound care supplies unless they were free, and to limit meal costs.

The state ultimately ordered Twin City Gardens closed, partly due to extensive structural deficiencies and mold. Residents were relocated.

During this year’s legislative session, state Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, pushed to have for-profit entities seeking to acquire a nonprofit nursing home demonstrate their financial and managerial capacity to operate it, and declare they didn’t engage in short-term buying and selling.

“We’ve encountered very complex corporate structures with entangled webs of affiliated companies in these takeovers, and it is often very difficult to find who is accountable for the violations,” Dibble said during a committee hearing. “Common practice is to extract value from the facilities, neglect maintenance and infrastructure to maximize profit at the expense of care, strip assets and walk away.”

Other legislators expressed concern about the burden of additional regulations on any prospective buyer of cash-strapped nursing homes that may otherwise have to close. A watered-down version of the bill, requiring for-profit entities to disclose their owners’ names, passed.

“How did this happen to people?” Gurda said of 2309 Hayes. “They literally had to evacuate these people, and because it was the height of the pandemic, and there was so much else going on, it just happened so quietly.”