When Westchester County Executive George Latimer and Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner led a contingent of well-wishers at the Sept. 24 ribbon-cutting for The Chelsea at Greenburgh, the senior living community at 715 Dobbs Ferry Road, the facility still was awaiting final licensing approval from New York state that would allow residents to begin moving in.
The 101-unit complex was designed to provide a full range of living options for seniors, ranging from independent living through assisted living and memory care while helping meet the medical needs of residents.
“Looking around at the building it does not necessarily strike you as the care level being so high because it looks like a luxurious community,” Suzanne Stephans, The Chelsea at Greenburgh’s community outreach director said during the Business Journal’s early October visit to the facility.
“That’s a game changer because we are meeting the needs of seniors that want a beautiful home and a beautiful community with a hefty social calendar within our activities department but they also need care.”
The Chelsea at Greenburgh is part of a group of senior communities operated by the Chelsea Management Group. It lists 14 senior housing locations in New Jersey, five in New York and also has a facility in Warren, N.J., for people with special needs. The CEO of the company, which has been operating for more than 30 years, is Herbert Heflich. He has a 50-year career in elder care management
The town of Greenburgh in 2011 had acquired the 6.89-acre Dobbs Ferry Road property during a tax foreclosure proceeding as a result of property taxes having gone unpaid by owner Franks Nursery & Crafts, which filed for bankruptcy. After untangling some legal issues surrounding an unpaid lien on the property, Greenburgh was able to sell the site.
Capitol Seniors Housing (CSH), based in Washington, D.C., bought the property for $3.5 million. CSH, a real estate acquisition, development and investment management firm, works with partners to develop senior housing communities.
Back in December 2017, CSH broke ground on a project at the site that it called Stonegate at Greenburgh. Like the newly completed senior living community, it had 101 units in a three-story 90,651-square-foot building. It had been scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2019. At that time of the groundbreaking, construction cost for the project was estimated to be $35 million.
“We’re excited to build our first senior living community in the state of New York and bring a top-quality senior living community to the historic town of Greenburgh,” Scott Stewart, managing partner of CSH said at the time.
Subsequently, when opening a senior living project in Shrewsbury, N.J., in April 2019 that it had built and was being operated by Chelsea Senior Living, CSH stated that Chelsea also would be operating the senior community it was building in Greenburgh.
“We have a registered nurse here. We are doing a telemedical program as well so if you weren’t feeling well could have a consultation with a physician,” Stephans said. “We are partnering with a company called CCS and CCS is a medical provider so their doctors come in and they well be the caregivers for our residents.”
Stephans noted that completing construction and getting ready to open The Chelsea at Greenburgh during the Covid-19 pandemic posed unexpected challenges.
“It has been quite a journey, ups and down galore. We were supposed to have our building open right when Covid struck back in March. The building went on lockdown,” Stephans said. “Nobody was in this building until early July. It was just empty, locked up. Then we started staffing; we continued to bring people in. Now we are ready to go. Our chef, our lifestyles director, our support staff, our care staff, everyone’s on board.” Stephans said that the full staff complement is about 100.
“Because this is all-new construction, nothing had to be retrofitted to protect from Covid,” Stephans said. “Our filtration system; I want to get this for my house. We’ve had to learn about testing and certain medical facts that were never part of our purview before. We’ve all had to be retrained and reeducated but we are constantly having meetings and training sessions. As this pandemic progresses we want to be up-to-the-moment with it. We are not being defensive about Covid any longer. Now we are on the offense.”
Stephans said that as The Chelsea at Greenburgh operates in the era of Covid, it will strive to empower the senior residents through exposure to a fulfilling life.
“I’ve seen what being locked up in an apartment for months on end has done to so many seniors and it is absolutely heartbreaking,” Stephans said.
Among the numerous features of the new facility are a library, sports pub and lounge, movie theater, combination beauty salon and barber shop, sunroom, landscaped walking paths, outdoor terrace and gardens.
There also are a number of two-bedroom apartments in the unit mix. Stephans said that one of the prospects to take a two-bedroom unit told her that she wanted an extra room for her clothes.
“Some people coming here to visit the facility are very worked up about Covid, but most people are not,” Stephans said. “They’ve learned to adapt or they’ve just said, ‘You know what, life goes on. We need care for mom and dad and we’ve got to roll with this until there’s a vaccine.’ Now, as things are opening up a bit, people are testing the waters. So, it’s really positive.”
