International Community Health Services (ICHS) will open a brand new facility, the Ron Chew Healthy Aging and Wellness Center, on November 10th, 2025. Located in the Beacon Pacific Village on Beacon Hill, the center is intended to quadruple the number of older adults ICHS can serve, from about 100 to about 400 income-and-medically-qualified people age 55+. It will do so through their community-based Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE), which will operate within the center. PACE enables older adults who might otherwise qualify to live in nursing homes to remain in their homes while receiving culturally-responsive care from ICHS.
According to ICHS CEO Kelli Nomura, their clients can expect “preventative care programs [that] include movement and exercise, social connections through interest groups and games, and shared lunches with nutrient-dense foods that honor our culture and keep our elders healthy and strong.”
Nomura believes that coupling preventative care programs with primary care makes accessing care much easier for older adults because they only go to one place to get the care and activity they need to become healthy and stay well.”
This center was years in the making and involved close collaboration among various community partners. After the success of the PACE program, ICHS looked to expand their services, launching a capital campaign formerly known as Aging in Pace (AiPACE). ICHS partnered with the Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority (SCIDpda) to create the Ron Chew Healthy Aging and Wellness Center.
According to SCIDpda Co-Executive Director Jamie Lee: “The intention was always for the AiPACE program to be on the ground floor of whatever site we were able to find, and then hopefully SCIDpda would be able to develop affordable housing on top.”
SCIDpda eventually found a site, and their development was later called Beacon Pacific Village, an affordable housing development that provided space for community resources and amenities. The Ron Chew Healthy Aging and Wellness Center is located within the development.
Not only is the new center bigger, at 25,000-square-feet, but its use and installation of various specialized medical equipment required special construction materials and procedures. It is also built on top of a historically-landmarked parcel of land on a slope, according to Lee. In order to fund their efforts, ICHS took on an ambitious capital campaign that eventually raised almost $20 million. Teresita Batayola, CEO of ICHS at the time, brought in lifelong Seattle resident and prominent community advocate Ron Chew to help with fundraising efforts through the ICHS Foundation.
According to Chew: “Teresita brought me to ICHS at a time when ICHS was facing very deep state funding cuts, and she knew of my work at the Wing Luke Museum and in the community in the fundraising development arena, so I came really to help ICHS bolster its funding, retain its strong community connections.”
In honor of Batayola’s leadership, the Teresita Batayola clinic within the center is named after her. It is the room where PACE participants can receive medical services.
Chew and ICHS also found a valuable partner and mentor with Paul Mar, former Director of Real Estate with SCIDpda. Paul served as the capital campaign committee co-chair from the campaign’s launch in 2015 to right up to his passing in 2024.
“If it wasn’t for [Paul Mar], some of the partnerships that were formed, seeing the reality of the project, and really thinking big may not have happened,” remarked Lee.”
Chew also looked up to Mar as a role model in the realization of the vision of the new center.
In 2024, ICHS decided to name the new AiPACE center after Ron Chew. According to Chew, who is now in his early 70s: “I tried to talk them out of it. I said, ‘You gotta name it after somebody’s already gone. Not me, I’m still here.’ But I am humbled and honored, and I was happy to work on helping develop this program.”
Chew talked more about his personal reasons for pursuing the project: “ICHS cared for my parents in their older years. My father worked as a waiter in one of the restaurants in Chinatown, and my mother worked in a sewing factory for $1.25 an hour. And during that era of growing up, I saw folks going without healthcare, and it just seemed like a real injustice, so I’m grateful to ICHS for caring for not only my parents’ generation, but for the generation now of folks who really don’t have the resources to be able to access care.”
The ribbon-cutting event for the opening of the Ron Chew Healthy Aging and Wellness Center takes place on Monday, November 10, at 2:00pm, with RSVP via EventBrite. For more information about PACE program eligibility and enrollment, please visit ichspace.org.
Adrian Alarilla, PhD, is a program evaluator, writer, researcher, and filmmaker. Born and raised in the Philippines, he is currently based south of in Seattle, and has a PhD in History from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Besides contributing to the International Examiner, he is an associate with Alaska-based consulting firm Stellar Group, and has worked with Tribal, governmental, and nongovernmental agencies in Alaska, Hawaiʻi, and the Pacific Islands.
