Solara Aevum Brings a New Kind of Wellness Experience to Green Lake
A downtown retreat born from love, loss, and the belief that light returns.
Downtown Green Lake has a new place to slow down, recharge, and focus on feeling your best — and behind its calm, light-filled rooms is a story that gives the place its name.
Solara Aevum, founded by Rebecca Van Scyoc and John Wood, brings together advanced wellness therapies, non-invasive aesthetics, and restorative experiences in a setting designed to feel more like a retreat than a traditional med spa. Overlooking the Mill Pond, the thoughtfully designed space pairs science-backed care with the calming character of Green Lake, creating an experience centered on wellness, confidence, recovery, and restoration.
A Story of Light Found in a Hard Season
Every business has an origin story. Solara Aevum’s began at a bedside.
Rebecca’s interest in wellness didn’t start in a spa — it started while caring for her late husband during his battle with glioblastoma, one of the most difficult forms of brain cancer. In the hardest season of her life, she watched supportive therapies like PEMF and oxygen therapy give him something precious: more energy, better days, and a greater sense of normalcy amid an illness that took so much of both.
It was a quiet kind of grace — the way a good therapy session, a moment of comfort, or simply feeling a little more like yourself can matter enormously when everything else feels uncertain. That experience reshaped how Rebecca thought about wellness entirely. She saw firsthand that caring for the body isn’t a luxury reserved for good days; it’s a source of resilience on the hardest ones, too, and a meaningful part of dignity, recovery, and quality of life.
Out of that season came a name, and a promise: Solara Aevum — Latin for “Light Everlasting” — chosen to reflect a belief that hope and restoration are possible even in life’s darkest chapters, and that light has a way of returning.
Where Beauty and Wellness Meet
That belief is woven into everything Solara offers today. It’s easy to think of “feeling your best” and “looking your best” as separate pursuits — but at Solara, they’re treated as one and the same. Confidence is restorative. Recovery is beautiful. And caring for how you look is very often part of caring for how you feel.
Solara’s offerings reflect that connected philosophy: red light therapy, PEMF, lymphatic therapies, mild hyperbaric wellness sessions, restorative skin treatments, scalp and hair health treatments (including serums formulated to restore hair health), and advanced aesthetics such as RF microneedling and body contouring. Rather than treating each service as a standalone offering, Solara was intentionally designed around a more connected approach to wellness — one where recovery, beauty, and restoration all support one another.
“We are not trying to create a high-volume, transactional med spa experience,” Rebecca shared. “We built Solara to be a place of healing and inspiration — somewhere peaceful and intentional, from the moment you walk in. It’s not about rushing through an appointment; it’s about giving yourself the time to recharge, and walking out feeling like the best version of yourself.”
Why Green Lake
Green Lake felt like a natural home for this vision. Its lakefront setting, welcoming downtown, local businesses, arts, and hospitality already create an atmosphere that encourages people to slow down and enjoy where they are. Rebecca and John also saw an opportunity to bring wellness experiences more commonly found in larger metropolitan areas closer to home — proof that a small town on the water could hold something this restorative.
The Stay at Solara
The vision continues above Solara with The Stay at Solara, a luxury boutique retreat curated by local designer Susan D’Arcy, owner of Johnson & Black. With beautifully designed rooms, spa-inspired touches, a private balcony overlooking the Mill Pond, and access to Solara’s wellness experiences, The Stay gives visitors another way to experience both Solara and downtown Green Lake. Together, the two spaces are designed to serve local residents while also helping draw new visitors to the community.
Built on Community
Bringing the idea to life required plenty of persistence — from restoring and modernizing a historic downtown building to navigating construction, licensing, staffing, training, and everything that comes with opening a new business. Rebecca and John credit family, friends, their team, advisors, contractors, community supporters, and local businesses — including Johnson & Black, Chops, Scoots, and Fortifi Bank — with helping make the vision a reality.
Now, they hope Solara can give some of that support back.
“I hope Solara adds energy, inspiration, and a sense of possibility to the community,” Rebecca shared. “I want it to be a place where people gather, recharge, and feel cared for.”
That impact can extend well beyond Solara’s doors — bringing people downtown, supporting neighboring businesses, and adding another experience that makes Green Lake a special place to live and visit.
For Rebecca Van Scyoc and John Wood, opening Solara Aevum marks the beginning of that next chapter — one shaped by loss, carried forward by hope, and built, quite literally, around the idea that light finds its way back.
Rebecca Van Scyoc (left) and Susan D’Arcy, owner of Johnson & Black, inside Solara Aevum.
