It was six years in the planning stage, and some thought it would never happen. But with the bulldozers revving up in a former apple orchard in New Paltz in just a few weeks, a long-awaited senior housing facility, called Woodland Pond, is about to become a reality. Due to open in 2009, the 201-unit facility has already received deposits from 143 seniors.
Sponsored and owned by the Kingston Regional Senior Living Corp. (KRSLC), an affiliate of The Kingston Regional Health Care System, which also owns and operates Kingston Hospital and Margaretville Memorial Hospital, Woodland Pond is a continuing-care retirement community (CCRC). The concept, which was started by the Quakers in Pennsylvania about 40 years ago, is combining independent living units with assisted-living and nursing-care facilities, enabling people to have all their needs met right on site should they require more care in the future. The CCRCs are usually sponsored by a not-for-profit organization ”“ typically faith oriented or related to health care ”“ which then contracts with a developer. Residents pay an entrance fee as well as a monthly service fee once they”™ve moved in.
The fees cover all expenses, including utilities, transportation, maintenance and meal credits (although each independent unit will have a full kitchen). What”™s novel about CCRCs is that 90 percent of the residents”™ assets are returned to the person”™s estate when they die or refunded to them if they decide to leave. The idea is that residents prepay for their future care without depleting their assets. The pool of funds also prevents residents from tapping into Medicaid, according to Frank Mandy, principal of New Life Management & Development Inc., the developer of Woodland Pond, based in Mount Laurel, N.J.
The project will consist of 201 apartments and cottages, ranging from one bedroom to two bedrooms with den, as well as 40 private skilled nursing accommodations and 60 assisted-living suites. It will feature a community center and numerous amenities, including a pool, public and private dining rooms, beauty salon, spa, fitness center, art room, deli, billiards room and library.
The entrance fees range from $196,000 to $470,000, depending on the type of unit. The monthly fee is $2,120. Residents also have a “life care” option for an extra $57,200 that would cover all nursing and assisted-living care. Joan Kelly-Kincade, Woodland Pond”™s director of marketing, said the amount is reasonable considering that nursing care costs $10,000 to $11,000 a month and assisted living $4,500 per month.
If a resident doesn”™t opt for life care, the entrance fee covers 30 days of assisted living and 60 days in a nursing center, after which people must foot the cost of such services themselves.
CCRCs are regulated by the states. Mandy said New York, which was late to the CCRC game, has the strictest regulation in the nation. One reason is to protect consumers, since retirees are in essence handing over their life savings. The states also have an interest in having the CCRCs succeed, since the facilities serve to reduce the expenditures for Medicaid.
Â
New York state limits ownership of CCRCs to not-for-profits (in other states, for-profit companies such as Hyatt are allowed to run the facilities). Because CCRCs “are meant to be a break-even operation,” fee increases ”“ as a result of higher energy costs, for example ”“ must be approved by the state Department of Health, according to Mandy.
The law also requires 70 percent of the units to be presold before construction can commence, a requirement that Woodland Pond met a few weeks ago. In order to ensure that applicants will be able to afford the fees, KRSLC has been reviewing each applicant”™s financial information to ensure “the deposit is real and that you have sufficient funds and income for the fees,” said Cynthia Rozenberg, vice president of strategic planning at The Kingston Regional Helath Care System and chief operating officer of Woodland Pond.
Woodland Pond will be New York”™s 11th CCRC; there is one located in Goshen and a couple of others in Westchester County. Elsewhere in the nation, they are plentiful, with some 40 CCRCs in the Philadelphia area alone. “It”™s a very popular living choice, as more seniors learn about them,” Mandy said, noting that the average stay in a CCRC is 11 years. His company has developed 25 CCRCs around the country, with 15 more in the pipeline. In New York, it has built a CCRC on Long Island and is renovating an old hospital building in Queens for a CCRC run by an organization serving survivors of the Holocaust.
Rozenberg said the way her organization and New Life came together was “an alignment of the stars. We had an employee at the time who happened to know the son of the owner of the land. He knew the owner had been talking to New Life, so they had a meeting. We had just gone through a strategic planning exercise, and one of our goals was to develop programs for the geriatric population of our service area.”
After doing its due diligence on several other CCRC developers as well, the Kingston Regional Health Care System ended up selecting New Life. Because of its extensive experience building and running CCRCs, New Life also has a contract with the not-for-profit to manage the property for the first five years.
It”™s up to KRSLC to decide the parameters of the project. For example, it is requiring that all residents be at least 62 years old. It also does an extensive review of financial data from each applicant to ensure the deposit is real and he or she has the income to pay the monthly fees.
The project will generate 350 to 374 construction jobs ”“ a mix of union and nonunion labor ”“ and 170 permanent positions once it opens, ranging from white-collar professional jobs to part-time waiter jobs in the dining rooms, according to Mandy.
Most of the facilities will be located in a 350,000-square-foot building surrounded by two-bedroom cottages. Thirty-five acres of the 88-acre site will be developed, with the remainder left as woods and countryside protected by a conservation easement. The design of the building and stonework and other natural materials will harmonize with the vernacular architecture of the Hudson Valley, said Mandy. Located just west of the Thruway, the complex will sit on a hill with a view of the Shawagunks. It will be buffered from the main road by woods, screening it from the neighbors, according to Mandy.
Though seeming to fulfill an important need for senior housing ”“ 90 percent of the people who”™ve put down deposits live within 20 miles of the complex, with the remainder having family in the region ”“ there was initial resistance to the project from officials and some residents. Two environmental groups, concerned about the development”™s encroachment onto wetlands, filed an Article 78 lawsuit. After the developer made some changes in the footprint, the suit was settled. Although Woodland Pond is tax exempt as a not-for-profit, it will be paying a payment in lieu of taxes of $13 million, spread out over 20 years.
Then, last July, the project”™s 100 percent financing by low-interest Industrial Development Agency bonds was put into jeopardy when the state Legislature failed to pass a law that would extend IDA authority to fund not-for-profits. The IDA had been subject to a sunset to fund not-for-profits, which expired in June. The Senate subsequently passed a compromise bill negotiated with the Assembly to extend the IDAs”™ authority for another seven months, freeing up the funds.
Mandy said the delays on the project ”“ the longest of any CCRC his company has worked on ”“ have resulted in significant price hikes of 8 percent to 10 percent since its inception. “If we could have gotten this under construction a year and a half ago, it was a very different construction environment,” he said. “We were guessing the cost would be $50 million of hard construction, but probably when we start construction next month it will be $64 million. There”™s a perception among some opponents that they haven”™t hurt anything by the delay, but they”™ve hurt the seniors themselves.”
Rozenberg said the financing package was complex, consisting of a short-term and long-term bonds, debt taxable bonds, and other vehicles. The Ulster County IDA has been authorized to issue bonds up to $125 million, $106 million of which is authorized in cash-free bonds.
Â
Â
