Even as Westport Capital Partners L.L.C. cashed out of a portion of its portfolio of assisted-living facilities, a second company in Westport is expanding its own amid a sustained hiring push at its new headquarters.
Westport Capital Partners sold a senior residential complex in Bennington, Vt., which it originally acquired in 2007 in partnership with Capital Health Group and Kaplan Development Group, along with three other facilities in Massachusetts and New Hampshire that have likewise since been sold. In all, buyers paid $83 million for the four senior housing centers.
At the time of the deal, Westport Capital owned 30 senior housing facilities and had investments in another dozen. The company revealed the sale even as Maplewood Senior Living builds out new independent- and assisted-living communities in Norwalk and Darien, and as it relocates its main office within Westport to One Gorham Island overlooking the Saugatuck River and adjacent to downtown.
Next spring, the company plans to open Maplewood at Strawberry Hill in Norwalk with nearly 85 units, followed by a facility in Darien with more than 65 units. Both will include “memory care” wings.
Maplewood CEO Gregory Smith said the company is also considering potential locales in Westport, Fairfield, Greenwich and Easton, as well as in New York in Westchester County and on Long Island, and possibly in New Jersey.
Previously known as Maplewood Communities, Smith said it changed its name to reflect the range of options it offers, including an increasing focus on facilities with residence areas for people with Alzheimer”™s disease who require additional care. Maplewood has added several managers to its team in the past few months, including Mary Underwood, an expert on Alzheimer”™s.
“There”™s been no new supply in the last 10 years or longer,” said Smith. “These are things on the list of master planners of every single town and city in Connecticut ”“ assisted living. We take that off the list for these planners. We have been incredibly successful in going in and ”¦ getting approvals.”
The supply problem is not the case in only Connecticut ”“ in the second quarter, the national inventory of housing for seniors increased at the slowest rate since the start of the recession ”“ just 1.1 percent from the first quarter according to the National Investment Center for the Seniors Housing and Care Industry (NIC), based in Annapolis, Md.
NIC added that occupancy rates are “trending sideways” but are above their previous low for the current business cycle.
Brookdale Senior Living, which owns Brookdale Place of Wilton, said in an August conference call that it saw slowing growth across its properties in May but through a few proactive moves reversed that trend within a few months.
“It became clear to us that the change in the economic drivers affecting our customers was having an impact,” said Bill Sheriff, CEO of the Brentwood, Tenn.-based company. “We tweaked some of our pricing and use of incentives beginning in May to drive move-ins. ”¦ We expect to see continuous improvement, while staying within the boundaries of reasonable competitive pricing.”
Maplewood likewise saw improving metrics this summer, emboldening Smith as the company readies to complete new homes.
“July was the best month we”™ve ever had in the history of our company,” he said. “It”™s a need-driven business.”
