What is a 'dementia village'? Wisconsin to open the first in America

Wednesday, February 4, 2026

As reported by Jacqueline Kehoe, Yahoo! creators 

America’s first ‘dementia village’ is coming to Wisconsin, and it’s nothing like traditional memory care.

Imagine a neighborhood where someone living with dementia can walk to a café, tend a garden, or simply sit on a porch watching the world go by. Not a hospital corridor lined with handrails, but an actual community with homes, greenery, and the gentle rhythms of everyday life.

That’s the vision taking shape in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, where Agrace is building the nation’s first Hogeweyk-style dementia village — a revolutionary approach that’s already transformed memory care across Europe, Australia, China, and Canada.

A home, not an institution

Traditional memory care facilities, for all their good intentions, often feel exactly like what they are: medical institutions. Residents are kept safe, but at the cost of spontaneity, personal choice, and connection to ordinary life. The Hogeweyk model flips this script entirely.

“Living at this campus will not feel like an institution — we are building individual households that look and feel just like a home,” said Agrace President and CEO Lynne Sexten. Each household will house eight residents who share similar lifestyle backgrounds, complete with a kitchen, living room, and private bedrooms — all the comforts of home within a secure community setting.

According to Eloy van Hal, who founded the original Hogeweyk village in the Netherlands, this approach makes a real difference. “We see that people stay for a much longer period in a better physical, mental, social, spiritual condition,” van Hal told Erin McGroarty at Madison’s Cap Times. The secret? Treating residents like people first, patients second.

More than just a village

Agrace’s village will welcome Day Club members — people with dementia who still live at home but can spend their days participating in village activities alongside residents. Think social connection, outdoor time, and physical activity in a setting that feels natural, not clinical. The campus transformation includes on-site housing for caregiving staff, a Grief Support Center, and a Training & Education Center, making it a comprehensive community resource for southern Wisconsin.

Led by a $7 million gift from philanthropists Ellen and Peter Johnson, the $30 million Revolutionizing Life with Dementia campaign is gathering momentum. “To be able to say that Madison is going to have this extraordinary project is something that the whole community can be very, very proud of,” the Johnsons noted.

As van Hal put it, quality of life means creating “a real, normal living environment where you can experience nature, where you can go outside, where you live in a small group, where you’re seen as a person.” (Honestly, we should all be so lucky. Who among us doesn’t want something like that?)

That vision is finally coming to America, and Wisconsin is leading the way.