Resort-like lifestyle

Research organization Statista predicts that by 2050, more than a fifth of the U.S. population will be 65 years or older, compared to only 15.2 percent today. And among the top 15 metro areas for populations age 55 and older, Los Angeles has the fifth-highest median monthly senior living costs. “It’s definitely booming,” Tim Mullaney, editor of Chicago-based Senior Housing News, told the Business Journal. “We’re seeing a lot of groups, developers, perceive an opportunity there. They have come in a lot. There’s been a huge flood of new supply.” One of the most prominent operators of senior living communities locally is Windsor-based Oakmont Management Group. Recently celebrating its third year, Oakmont of Santa Clarita is about to expand its footprint in June with a brand new, luxury senior living community that is currently under construction. Executive Director Margie Veis will manage Oakmont of Valencia after three years at the other facility. “I opened Oakmont of Santa Clarita,” Veis told the Business Journal. “There’s such a need in the community that Oakmont will open a second one in Valencia in 2019.” At Oakmont of Santa Clarita, which has 86 apartments and 90 residents, industry vet Igor Molchanov has just assumed Veis’ role as executive director. With more emphasis on memory care, Oakmont of Valencia, to open at 24070 Copper Hill Drive, will deliver a two-story, 85,000-square-foot community with 40 assisted living and 50 memory care apartment homes in a variety of floorplans to accommodate 100 residents. Community amenities will include gourmet dining, a pair of movie theaters, beauty salon and on- and off-site recreational and social activities. “It’s a little more secluded,” Veis said of the upcoming facility. The two Oakmonts will exist roughly 3.5 miles apart, but there’s demand to support them. This is the first time Oakmont has opened two facilities so close to each other, Veis noted, but the Santa Clarita market has exceeded expectations. “When we had our grand opening, we had such turn out and support from the community and it filled up quickly,” Veis said. “There definitely was the need for this.” Asset acquisition Northstar Senior Living owns and operates nearly 40 senior living properties in such California communities as Simi Valley, Oxnard and Santa Barbara. Locally, the Sacramento company recently acquired the Meridian Senior Living house at 6833 Fallbrook Avenue in West Hills. The renovated and reopened facility, now called Fallbrook Glen of West Hills, employs 55 and has 96 units, with 79 for assisted living and 17 for secure memory care. It retained from the previous owner Memory Care Director Vanathda Dunn, while ushering in new Executive Director Greg Becker. Acquisitions have been common as investors and operators buy distressed assets, Mullaney said. Several miles away from Fallbrook Glen of West Hills, GHC Housing Partners bought Valley Village Senior Apartment Homes, the 1995-built, three-story, 188-unit class B at 12111 Chandler Blvd., in 2015. In July, MBK Senior Living, U.S. arm of Japanese conglomerate Mitsui & Co., acquired nine senior housing communities — most of which are located in California — totaling 1,174 units in a $382 million deal with West Partners. MBK, which now owns and operates 34 properties totaling 3,800 units across multiple Western states, plans to refurbish the independent and assisted living and memory care portfolio, which included the Reserve in Thousand Oaks, a 148,237-square-foot, 150-unit complex at 3575 N. Moorpark Road with myriad amenities, from restaurant dining, bistro and coffee bar to fitness center, game room and artist studio. However, in an industry that favors stability, ownership changes can raise eyebrows. “A concern has been that investors have come in and they see it as a real estate play, but this is an operationally intense industry,” Mullaney said. “There could be bad outcomes there, the worse for the seniors.” Building boom Last week, banking firm Dekel Capital announced that Sage Glendale Senior Living, a 113-bed assisted living and memory care facility from Willis Development, will receive $59.4 million in debt and equity financing for construction. East West Bank provided $38.7 million while Dekel arranged the loan and added $20.7 million in equity. Last fall, a pair of unrelated senior planned communities were simultaneously proposed in Camarillo and in Moorpark. In a unanimous Nov. 14 decision, the Camarillo City Council awarded developer Shea Homes the 281 housing allotments requested to erect a housing community for seniors at the St. John’s Seminary property off Upland Road in Camarillo — a combination of duplex, cluster and single-story single-family homes. Moorpark City Council approved a large senior living community north of Casey Road and west of Walnut Canyon Road proposed by Aldersgate Investment, an Oxnard-based real estate development and construction firm which intends to construct a 390-unit senior living facility on a 50-acre lot just south of Meridian Hills and north of Walnut Canyon School. Aldersgate Senior Living Project would see a Spanish-style gated community offering a mix of duplex and fourplex villas and two- and three-story apartment buildings for independent living, plus 130 units devoted to memory care and assisted living. Amenities would include a single-story recreation building, memory garden and common buildings with theater, restaurant, mailroom, pool and salon. In June, Thomas Safran & Associates, which owns and operates 61 properties and thousands of units in the greater Los Angeles area, opened a 98-unit affordable senior housing development opened in Reseda. The $24.2 million project at 7238 Canby Ave. was backed by L.A.’s Community Redevelopment Agency and Housing Department, Canby Woods Senior Housing features community and TV rooms, computer area, fitness center and activity programming. One-bedroom apartments at this Valley complex run from $648 to $777 a month while a two-bedroom fetches $728 to $874. Last year, Canyon Partners Real Estate provided $10.6 million in preferred equity financing to Calabasas developer Griffin Fine Living to build a senior living community in Simi Valley. Conceived as a two-story complex replete with 100,000 square feet of space and including 75 assisted living units and 26 memory care units, with amenities to include arts and crafts room, salon and a juice bistro, Griffin Plaza Senior Living, due late 2019, will be established within the existing 13-acre Griffin Plaza Retail Center, near the 118 freeway and Tapo Canyon Road. Solvere Living, a full-service senior housing management firm with properties throughout the U.S., will operate the complex. In the East San Fernando Valley, there are also plenty of projects underway. The nonprofit East L.A. Community Corp., in collaboration with New Directions for Veterans, YM Architects and Westport Construction, has already begun work on the $34.5 million Sun Valley Senior Veterans Apartments. Located at 9041 N. Laurel Canyon Blvd., the four-story structure will include 88 one- and two-bedroom units reserved for qualifying senior incomes, promising such amenities as laundry, library, fitness center, media room and computer lab. Meta Housing Corp., a firm that has 41 senior housing projects topping 4,419 units, built the four-story, 95-unit Winnetka Senior Apartments at 20750 Sherman Way in 2016. California living California, including the Valley region, enjoys competitive advantages of weather, beach and cultural amenities compared to other parts of the country. And upscale real estate development capitalizes on those advantages. President Sally Michael, president of the California Assisted Living Association, cited a ProMatura survey in which California senior residents rank quality of life factors very highly: 98 percent of residents find staff friendly; 94 percent say they receive their desired assistance and privacy, while 95 percent feel safe and secure in their senior communities. “All levels of assisted living, memory care, and continuing care retirement communities continue to be popular models of care for California’s older adults and their family members,” Michael told the Business Journal. “They help promote quality of life for hundreds of thousands of seniors and the variations in size, amenities, services, and pricing mean that consumers can choose a community that meets their needs, an environment they find attractive, and pricing that works for them.” If any company reflects the senior home industry’s move to commercial real estate development in California, it’s Oakmont. Founded 22 years ago, the entity became a one-stop, start-to-finish development company as recently as in 2012. Oakmont Management Group today employs about 2,000 “team members,” according to Chief Marketing Officer Crystal Robinson. Of that figure, 80 work in Oakmont’s build-design division. “There’s definitely a need with all the Baby Boomers coming and especially in California,” Robinson said. Her company, she added, has trained its focus on the lucrative California market, where nice weather rules. “We know the markets, we know the area, it’s kind of our main focus,” she said regarding Oakmont. “We see there’s a need and people like the product that we’re providing,” Robinson said. Locally, the company “just broke ground” in Camarillo, Robinson said, while Oxnard is “right in the early stages.” An Oakmont community will grace Simi Valley by late 2020. “We are definitely seeing a growth,” added Veis, the manager in Santa Clarita, which is currently seeing a boom of residential and commercial building. “In Santa Clarita, we have residents that have lived here 30, 40, 50 years,” Veis said. “They’re part of the community and they don’t want to leave we’re also dealing with adult children who want to move their parents nearby.” Veis believes that her company has the industry edge because “we’re a family owned company. Bill and Cindy Gallagher are the owners and they’re still hands-on and makes us stand part from the bigger assisted living. We believe in our staff and the reason why we are here to take care of our seniors. When they walk into an Oakmont, they feel good.” Added Robinson: “The Gallaghers have an exceptional sensibility when it comes to combining beauty and function. It’s a luxury product. We have experience with big campus-style communities for seniors.” Robinson and Veis see the demand for such high-end product. “Oakmont caters to those people who want that resort feeling,” Veis said. “The boomers, they want it more than ever. They want restaurant choices and they don’t want institutional food. They want to be able to have a glass of wine with dinner and see new movies, in addition to old movies. We have to move with the times because they’re becoming more sophisticated.” To that point, Oakmont installed Executive Chef Rina Younan, a “Food Network” celebrity, to oversee the menu as Oakmont’s vice president of culinary services. “Her big focus is to change the way of senior living dining,” Robinson said of Younan, who has infused seasonal and farm-to-table elements, wood-fire pizza ovens and rotisseries to Oakmont’s epicurean program. “We accommodate special diets or diet restrictions,” Robinson said. “We even have diabetic and other healthy options.” Onward and upscale At the Jan. 24 ribbon-cutting ceremony for Fallbrook Glen of West Hills, Becker, the executive director, told the Business Journal that Northstar’s overhaul of the former Meridian units has brought more than just superficial façade touches and new landscaping. In the increasingly competitive field of senior living facilities, the opening proved a good time for the facility to show off its culinary prowess, as chefs Lindani Zondi and Julio Hernandez presented a menu that included such hipster-friendly offerings as lollipop lamb and chicken skewers, tempura shrimp and jalapeno poppers and house-made sushi. Formerly employed in the kitchen at Joey Woodland Hills at Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield’s Village mall in Warner Center, Hernandez prepared Philadelphia rolls made from scratch while Zondi said that since the Northstar takeover, the company has upgraded its in-house food program toward “a new school of cooking” with a variety of restaurant-like options. The menu, which will now include such fare as filet mignon, prime rib and shrimp scampi, caters to the more sophisticated needs and upscale tastes of today’s senior living residents, Becker said. “(Northstar) has created an environment that is more upscale with skilled training and (more senior programming),” Becker said. Mullaney at Senior Living News said the majority of the assisted care and memory care communities are serving “a more affluent market for sure. The majority has been private pay and pretty expensive.” According to a 2015 cost of care survey, the average price of assisted living in California was roughly $3,750 per month, ranging between $987 and $9,000. However, if the champions of these high-end senior complexes are to be believed, residents receive plenty more than quality care for their expenditure. Overall, the quality of these homes “really depends on the quality of the staff,” Mullaney said. The challenge at the moment, he explained, is that labor markets are tight as wages rise and competing homes poach the best talent in care and dining staff. However, the biggest winners in the current market are the consumers. “It’s really about finding the right fit about what you need and want,” Mullaney said. “A positive is that with all of the competition and capital coming in, we’re also seeing innovation,” he continued, citing the Jimmy Buffett-themed Margaritaville communities as one example. “A one-size-fits-all model in the market is not going to be enough moving forward. It’s moved away from an institutional feel than the traditional skilled nursing home. You hear companies describe their facilities and health care resorts.” If there is a downside, Mullaney noted, it may lie in timing, because developers can overbuild. But he has no doubt that the baby boom wave will eventually fill up the rooms. “The Baby Boom generation is huge and will bring it eventually but prior to the Baby Boom was the Great Depression generation and birth rates were low during the Great Depression,” he said. “It used to be your entertainers (at senior facilities) were those who only sang the oldies and it was a little hokey and you had your basic foods,” Veis added. “Well, now, the expectation is completely different. They want healthy choices and they want to go on outings that stimulate them. It’s a completely different field then when I started 20 years ago, and I think that’s going to continue.”