Nonprofit senior residing supplier Cedar Group is updating its three communities with renovation tasks to organize for the subsequent era of senior residing clients.
The nonprofit has three communities in Washington County, Wisconsin, north of Milwaukee, together with a full continuum campus referred to as the Cedar Lake campus and a separate impartial residing campus with duplex properties and a reminiscence care and assisted residing group. The assisted residing and reminiscence care group sits on a 160-acre campus, of which 10 acres are at present developed – a “clean canvas” for future tasks, based on CEO Nicole Pretre.
Earlier this month, Cedar Group accomplished a $40 million repositioning of the legacy Cedar Lake campus, an effort that took two years to finish. By downsizing expert nursing beds from 415 to 75, the group ended up with 100,000 sq. toes of vacant house with which to construct upon.
“As a substitute of being new, we’re very targeted on being sustainable and fascinated about the atmosphere,” Pretre mentioned.
To remodel the Eighties-built most important campus constructing at Cedar Lake, management labored with designers so as to add gabled parts and gave the property a “residential really feel,” versus its previous as a looming cement constructing, whereas changing expert nursing models to up to date impartial residing flats.
With 550 acres of pure inexperienced house and 1,500 toes of shoreline alongside the lake, incorporating renovated parts into the group whereas preserving the pure areas was an essential guiding issue for the repositioning, Pretre mentioned.
That included changing a talented nursing constructing into impartial residing flats and including three assisted residing flooring. These modifications resulted within the constructing regaining occupancy at or close to 100%, a big restoration from a pandemic-era low within the sixtieth percentile.
Behind the scenes, the group’s most important campus noticed a serious overhaul of important infrastructure with a brand new generator, a brand new fireplace alarm system, and upgraded Wi-Fi and mobile connectivity. Extra upgrades included a brand new telephone system, an digital well being file system, and a brand new nurse name system.
“It’s been large to see the constructing coming again to life,” Pretre mentioned.
Cedar Group confronted staffing shortages as occupancy elevated at its campuses, Pretre mentioned. The operator labored to enhance employees retention and recruitment in mild of these challenges. She described it as a “mirrored journey” between the flexibility to employees adequately, which led to occupancy development.
“It’s been an unbelievable balancing act over the past 18 months—rebuilding occupancy, rebuilding the staff, and getting to a degree the place we really feel like we’re in a extremely good place with each of these areas proper now,” Pretre mentioned.
For the reason that top of the pandemic, Pretre mentioned the corporate’s impartial residing models have “seen a leap” in occupancy.
Transferring ahead, Pretre mentioned the nonprofit senior residing supplier is contemplating development throughout the “complete continuum” from a “income and diversification perspective.” This might embrace contemplating acquisition and affiliation alternatives to forge new partnerships.
Whereas no plans are concrete, Pretre mentioned she foresees future impartial residing development and is at present weighing three acquisition alternatives.
“To start with, we’re going to take a breath, however that doesn’t imply we’re not continually exploring and these partnership alternatives,” Pretre mentioned. “I might say there’s an attention-grabbing breadth of alternatives; it’s a number of paths of development for us.”
