Lexington, KY - As the population of America — and Kentucky — gets older, more and more families are faced with difficult decisions about the best living situations for older adults.
Sharbel Joseph has seen how families can get pulled apart when older adults need more day-to-day care than other family members can provide.
“I want to do my part in reversing that trend,” Joseph said. “We are bringing families closer together as they grow older.”
Joseph, head of the Lexington-based property development firm The Joseph Group, is trying to do his part by creating Ashgrove Woods, a $30 million, 20-acre residential development designed to appeal to baby boomers and their parents by clustering single family homes and duplexes, assisted-living, and 24-hour care homes in one community, with easy access to retail, dining, entertainment and services. The neighborhood will be interconnected with golf cart lanes and walking/biking trails and will include a clubhouse, banquet hall, chapel, community garden and park.
The Joseph Group is partnering with Christian Care Communities, Kentucky’s largest nonprofit provider of care for older adults.
The Joseph Group and Christian Care broke ground on the development, near the Brannon Crossing development off U.S. 27 in northern Jessamine County, on Jan. 31. There are 70 lots for duplexes and single-family homes, and the first homes should be ready this summer. The assisted-living complex should open in spring 2013.
Joseph said it was the market (baby boomers and older adults compose close to 40 percent of the population within a 10-mile radius of Ashgrove Woods) that led him to retirement community development.
“People are healthier and living longer,” Joseph said. “The lifestyle of the senior adult is different even than 10 years ago.”
While he has been involved in different aspects of retirement community development, this is the first time he has been the lead developer. He now sees retirement community development as his vocation and wants to position The Joseph Group as a leader in that field.
“I had a vision to do an assisted-living project,” Joseph said. He also saw a need for independent living, adjacent to assisted living and memory care, “where the baby boomer generation can live … and everyone has their own independence.”
As part of his research, he toured retirement communities around the country to “cherry-pick the best of the different campuses,” he said.
Joseph’s site search led him to the Brannon Crossing area, where development began in 2005, taking advantage of the heavy commuter traffic on U.S. 27 between Lexington and Nicholasville.
Ashgrove Woods will be behind Brannon Crossing, a site that combines proximity to shopping, dining and services and the Bluegrass region’s picturesque rolling countryside.
The property near Brannon Crossing had a headstart over other locations Joseph looked at because “it was already developed. It had the roads, infrastructure, curbs and gutters.” He said in the current climate, “it is darn near impossible to go out on raw land” and put together a feasible project.
His research led him to partner with Christian Care Communities, a nonprofit, faith-based senior-care provider based in Louisville, Ky.
Keith Knapp, a gerontologist and CEO of Christian Care Communities, said when they were approached by The Joseph Group, they found that Joseph already had done a lot of homework and “was a quick study.”
“He had already talked to several folks who do what we do,” Knapp said.
Christian Care Communities provides care for older adults at eight different facilities around Kentucky. But part of their growing strategy is to expand in central Kentucky, which made Ashgrove Woods appealing, even if it is different from their typical business model.
“Ordinarily we own and operate our own facility,” Knapp said. “This is a new kind of business arrangement for us.”
It also was an opportunity to grow without a huge outlay of capital for the nonprofit.
Instead of owning the facility, Christian Care will provide the staff and services for 36 memory-care units and 36 assisted-living units, where residents live more independently but may need help with meals, cleaning and some personal care.
They also will be available to provide in-home care for the homes and duplexes that will be for sale as part of the development. Those homeowners also will have access to services in the assisted-living area, such as the cafeteria, a salon and bistro.
Knapp said one great thing about the 150 service-related jobs expected to be created by the development is that “these are jobs that won’t go to Mexico.”
Giving seniors a place to retire means they will continue to shop locally, bank locally and use other local services.
“It is a real strong addition to any community,” he said.