More than a year after violent storms tore apart the memory care facility on Shallowford Road, residents and staff are returning to The Lantern at Morning Pointe.
"I'm in my element. I'm home again," said Alisha Landes, executive director of the facility where 59 people with dementia were living when the storms struck late on Easter night in April 2020.
Now that the $10 million rebuilding project is complete, the 43,000-square-foot building is nearly new from the ground up, said Greg Vital, president and cofounder of Morning Pointe. The destruction that night was unimaginable, he said.
"When I pulled up here that night, I have never felt so overwhelmed in my entire life," he said. "I'm glad it's over."
Residents began returning on July 5, and the official grand opening of the new facility will be Thursday, Landes said. There are 36 residents who are either living there or will be soon, including several who lived there before the storm, she said.
The Lantern has a capacity of 59, and was full the night of the tornadoes. No one at The Lantern was injured in the storm, which still strikes her as miraculous, Landes said.
"We had residents in their beds, in their rooms, surrounded by glass and no roof over their heads," she said.
Landes found one woman standing quietly in her room, the dark sky overhead. "There's no ceiling, and she's just standing there by her bed, looking at me," Landes said. "She just walked out with me."
CARTA sent buses to evacuate the residents, and by 3 a.m., everyone was out and housed temporarily at the Embassy Suites. Over the next 12 days, they found new housing for every resident while the rebuilding began.
"We turned the third and fourth floors [of the hotel] into a memory care unit," Landes said.
Across Shallowford Road, another Morning Pointe facility was also struck by the same storms. Morning Pointe of Chattanooga at Shallowford, an assisted living center, reopened in April after extensive repairs.
"Situations like this are very rare, to have two buildings hit in one night," Vital said. "I wouldn't wish it on anyone."
The Lantern at Morning Pointe is one of six Chattanooga-area Morning Pointe facilities, with additional campuses in Hixson, East Brainerd and Collegedale. Morning Pointe owns 35 assisted living and Alzheimer's care communities in five Southeastern states.
Contact Mary Fortune at mfortune@timesfreepress.com. Follow her on Twitter at @maryfortune.