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Best Assisted Living Design of 2021: Luxury Senior Living Reaches New Heights in Maplewood’s NYC Highrise

On Manhattan’s Upper East Side sits a highrise building with a design rivaling some of the Big Apple’s most exclusive apartments. But the building isn’t a condo complex or a storied apartment — it’s a senior living community.

The building is Inspir Carnegie Hill, a 23-story, 215-unit senior living community from Westport, Connecticut-based Maplewood Senior Living and Omega Healthcare Investors (NYSE: OHI) and the first entrant in the growing Inspir brand. Since opening in 2021, Inspir Carnegie Hill has exemplified the ultra-luxe senior living trend, with a slate of luxury features, cutting-edge technology and rates starting north of $12,000.

The community’s design — from Handel Architects — is meant to connect residents with the outdoors and natural light, with floor-to-ceiling windows, interior gardens, a landscaped terrace and naturally colored stones and metal materials.

Today, the highrise stands head and shoulders above most other assisted living communities, both in height and in quality of its design and services. And that is why it took the top spot in 2021 Senior Housing News Architecture & Design Awards’ “Best Assisted Living” category.

The concept

The genesis of Inspir Carnegie Hill dates back to late 2012 and early 2013, when Maplewood and Omega were exploring ways to build communities in urban “gateway” markets where demand for senior living ran high but the number of communities was relatively low.

Although a number of markets across the country fit that bill — and Maplewood has its eye on many of them with plans to expand the Inspir brand — the Big Apple became the primary target relatively early on in the process, according to Maplewood CEO Greg Smith.

“We felt that to kick off an urban brand, there would be no better place than the real estate capital of the world,” Smith told Senior Housing News.

So, the project team got to work researching what kind of senior living models might work best for New York City. Although the initial planning process included options for rehabbing an existing building and turning it into a senior living community, it quickly became apparent that a new, custom-built community was the right way forward. By the summer of 2015, they had landed on a concept: a senior living highrise in Manhattan.

One year later in 2016, Omega and Maplewood closed on the land for the project, and spent the next year finalizing the project’s design and construction plans.

The community’s design is rooted in fresh air, nature and sunlight — all things that have taken a newfound importance amid a pandemic that has forced senior living residents to stay indoors more often, according to Frank Fusaro, partner in the New York City office of Handel Architects, who led design for the Inspir project.

“The design is centered on the use of natural light, as well as access to gardens and nature — all meant to infuse positivity and invigorate the spirit,” Fusaro told Senior Housing News. “We focused on creating connections for the building residents: connections to city views, connections to nature and the outdoors and connections to community.”

The architects achieved this goal in a variety of ways. The building’s communal spaces were designed to feature large glass folding walls, which slide out of the way “so that residents can enjoy the feeling of sitting on a porch in front of a garden of climbing vines,” Fusaro said.

Inspir Carnegie Hill’s design also includes lush greenery as a recurring motif, with gardens extending through the floors in the community’s restaurant and lounge, a large wrap-around terrace of the 16th floor “sky park,” and a planted canopy above the community’s ground-floor lobby entrance. The sky park connects to a winter garden clad in oak wood boards, furthering the connection to the outdoors.

“Residents can meander the building’s perimeter, enjoy the fragrant gardens, sit on the south facing sun porch and have a meal or meet with friends and family,” Fusaro said.

Technology was also part of the community’s initial design, and today the community includes a tech suite called Alli that includes virtual reality experiences, auditory enhancement services, resident safety systems and live streaming classes.

Maplewood prides itself on “looking forward” with regard to new technology, according to Smith.

“I feel like we were part of the technology evolution with regard to senior housing, and we continue to do that,” Smith said.

Like any urban senior living project, the design phase didn’t come without some challenges. The project required large contiguous floor plates to allow support functions and residential elements to coexist without a change in level, which Fusaro said is more typical in suburban planning.

“To help address this challenge we organized the building’s program to take advantage of setbacks, to maximize access to the outdoors, while also thoughtfully considering the varying levels of care provided throughout the building,” Fusaro said.

The community was designed so that higher-acuity care floors were located on the building’s lower floors — where there are larger floorplates, “allowing for more generous support spaces where they are needed most,” according to Fusaro. Residents in lower-acuity live on the upper floors of the building, above the building’s setback, where less support is needed.

The construction

Construction kicked off in 2017, following the demolition of four existing buildings on the site.

Like any New York City highrise construction project, Inspir was “not for the faint of heart,” said Tom Gaston, Maplewood’s chief investment officer.

“You need an exceptional team to do it, and I think any developer in the industry would tell you that,” Gaston told SHN.

Construction challenges included the site itself. New York City is unique in that it is just 33 feet above sea level, meaning construction crews had to mitigate groundwater when laying the building’s foundation. The site on 2nd Avenue was also adjacent to a $200 million expansion of the city’s subway system, which further complicated the project and timeline.

Then there was the Covid-19 pandemic, which hit in 2020 as the project was in its later stages. Construction shut down across the country in the early days of the pandemic, but the Inspir project was deemed essential and crews were able to continue with construction, although at a slower pace.

All told, the project’s completion was delayed by about nine months. But there was a silver lining to that delay. Maplewood used the time to retrofit the building for the pandemic age, including by installing photohydroionization systems and enhanced HVAC filtration, ultraviolet light sanitizers and systems that increased the building’s airflow.

“We made hundreds of thousands of dollars in changes as we went to … make this building the best in the business,” Gaston said.

The completion

Construction crews wrapped up work by December 2020, and the building opened a few months later in March. In the end, it took Maplewood about five years to go from site acquisition to opening date. All told, ​​project costs registered at about $315 million, which was above the project’s initial cost estimate of $270 million.

The finished project “redefines aging in the city,” according to architect Fusaro.

“The building is conducive to the quality of life that Inspir supports and their residents enjoy — connected to nature, their community and the city through well organized and designed spaces,” he added.

Today, Inspir Carnegie Hill exemplifies modern ultra-luxurious senior living, with a salon, lounge and library, fitness center, heated saltwater pool, screening room, two fine dining venues with included meals, concierge services, Mercedes-Maybach “house car” and limousine services for residents.

Residents also have access to care from onsite physicians, and the community has partnerships with outside organizations such as Rusk Rehabilitation and its horticultural therapy program at NYU Langone Health.

SHN Design Awards judges praised the community for its connection to the outdoors and modern design.

“I loved the sky park, and that might be the best space of any submission,” said Dean Maddalena, President of StudioSIX5 and a judge on this year’s awards.

Similarly, Perkins Eastman Principal and SHN Design Awards judge Joe Hassel said the community was “beautifully designed.”

Lease-up has progressed as expected, and the community is still on track for stabilization 18 to 24 months post-opening, according to Smith. The community is currently seeing about 10 to 12 move-ins per month, and interest has only accelerated in the month of January.

“I’m very happy with where we are from a progress standpoint, and more importantly, from a momentum standpoint,” Smith said.

Perhaps the biggest vote of confidence is that Maplewood and Omega plan to expand the brand’s footprint to other cities across the country, starting with Washington, D.C. and potentially later down the road in London as well as markets in California and Florida. But with the NYC project behind them, Smith feels like the company has a vast number of options to choose from.

“At this point in time, we could take on any other project in any other area, here domestically or internationally,” Smith said. “We learned a lot along the way.”

The post Best Assisted Living Design of 2021: Luxury Senior Living Reaches New Heights in Maplewood’s NYC Highrise appeared first on Senior Housing News.

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