Colorado Real Estate Journal - March 7, 2018
Development of Balfour’s senior living campus in Louisville began nearly 20 years ago, and it will culminate with a new assisted living building. Lavender Farms will add 57 units of assisted living to the campus, which has grown to 14 acres and spans the spectrum of senior care, from independent living to Alzheimer’s and memory care, and skilled nursing. “Our existing assisted living community has been full for some time, and the design is 20-21 years old,” said Balfour Senior Living founder and CEO Michael Schonbrun. “There have been innovations in design of assisted living communities, and we’ve learned things in 20 years of operations that we want to introduce to our market.” One of many things Balfour has learned is that seniors want larger apartments. About three-quarters of the units in the original, 61-unit assisted living facility were studios that averaged about 300 square feet. The new building will include a 50-50 split between studios and one-bedroom units, with the average size of a studio growing to more than 400 sf. The community, being developed in partnership with AEW Capital Management, is being called Lavender Farms for the lavender plants that will be incorporated into the landscaping. Landscape design is something Balfour takes pride in and has garnered awards for in the past. “It will have a separate kitchen and dining room, even though it’s right across the street from the original assisted living. We’ll have a number of common spaces, high ceilings, large windows looking out into what’s going to be a very well landscaped set of courtyards with lavender plantings and water features,” Schonbrun said. Lavender Farms will offer farm-to-table dining and 24/7 nurses on site. Residents will be able to walk 30 to 40 yards to the existing campus, which has swimming pools and beauty salons. A shuttle between the two buildings also wil be provided. DTJ Design is the architect for Lavender Farms, which is being built by Brinkmann Constructors. The community is slated for occupancy in first-quarter 2019. Balfour Senior Living’s Louisville campus is located off the northeast corner of South Boulder and Courtesy roads. It is home to about 400 residents, about half of whom come from nearby communities, while 50 percent come from outside of Colorado. It is unusual to have such a high percentage of out-of-state seniors; only Atlanta has comparable numbers, Schonbrun said. “It’s because we have so many folks who have moved here from other parts of the country. They’ve either gone to CU or they’ve come for the quality of life and stayed, and now they are 40, 50, 60 years old … and their parents are beginning to need more care.” Many adult children, rather than moving back to their hometowns to care for aging parents, bring parents to Colorado to be close to them and their children, for instance. Balfour’s assisted living costs around $4,500 to $6,500 per month, depending on the size of unit and location. That includes three meals a day, nursing care, transportation and activities. Schonbrun said some companies start with a lower basic cost and add fees for every service provided. “We don’t want to nickel-and-dime people, so we try very hard to include as much as we reasonably can in that basic fee,” he said. Balfour already is seeing demand for Lavender Farms, according to Schonbrun. “We have folks living now in our independent living community who are going to need assisted living in the next year or so, and they are eagerly awaiting this construction because, when the time comes for them to move, they’d rather be in this new building, not only because it will be new and shiny and all the good things that a new building has, but also it will have larger living spaces and other kinds of improvements that we’ve picked up over the years,” he said. While Lavender Farms completes development of the Louisville campus, Balfour Senior Living also is active in other markets. It opened an assisted living and memory care facility in Stapleton in August and has an 84-unit assisted living and memory care facility opening in Littleton in the second quarter.