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Best Dining Renovation of 2022: Raising the Bar on Resident Choice

With eight bespoke dining venues, Waterstone on High Ridge, a senior living community in Stamford, Connecticut, is all-in on resident choice.

Owned by National Development and managed by Epoch Senior Living , the 184,000 square-foot community was completed in January of 2022. The community’s eateries range from formal to casual and are staffed by a team of more than 30 culinary professionals catering to residents’ specific desires.

With the dining venues, the community not only offers a full continuum of care but also meal choices tailored for residents in their respective settings.

Among the project’s big goals was to raise the bar on creativity and choice in senior living dining, according to National Development Co-founder and Managing Partner Ted Tye.

“We try to improve and adapt as we do each new building, and the quality of design of this building will be to beat in the future,” Tye told Senior Housing News.

The community’s dining-forward design, coupled with its high-end amenities and design, earned it the top spot in the Best Dining category of the 2022 Senior Housing News Architecture and Design Awards.

The Concept

Planning for the community began in 2019. Epoch and National Development previously partnered on 16 other communities, and the companies wanted to further raise the bar with its next iteration.

The project team included Elkus Manfredi Architects, which handled the community’s architectural and interior design planning.

The company had been looking for a project in the Stamford area for “several years,” before determining that its Waterstone program would be a good fit due to the area’s demographics, according to Tye.

The site they landed on was a former office campus occupied previously by GE Capital. The hilltop location enjoyed great views and was suitable for senior living as it already included lush landscaping. The only problem was that it was still occupied by a sprawling office complex.

In working with the owner of the property, National Development agreed to demolish half of the complex and create underground parking to make way for the community. The other half of the existing building was separated out and readapted into a private school.

“This required careful planning and even more careful construction,” Tye said.

One of the community’s primary goals was to break the mold of typical senior living dining. Specifically, the project planners wanted to distance themselves from older, more institutional models for dining with only one venue and limited meal options for residents.

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Another tenet of the design was connecting residents to nature. That was achieved through a design from Elkus Manfredi that included oversized windows and patio and outdoor seating. The contemporary New England farmhouse design also featured natural stone fireplaces, bright gathering spaces, a fitness center, indoor pool and mind-body studio.

The design also incorporated building materials such as hand-laid brick, wood and stone accents.

At the center of the plan were eight dining venues designed to be flexible and easily reconfigured to meet various event and use requirements, Kaufman noted.

The venues include The Pub, offering a warm and inviting casual atmosphere with stone fireplace, wood-like plank floors, leather club chairs and flexible furnishings. Adjoining is the Restaurant, the most formal of all the dining spaces, and the Newman Room, a private room that residents can reserve for special events, family gatherings and custom chef prepared dining experiences.

For more casual options, residents can retreat to the Sun Porch, a venue full of natural light and a two-sided gas fireplace with inviting farmhouse decor. A juice bar is located near the community’s art gallery. It’s here where continental breakfasts are served. A sprawling outdoor terrace offer another dining option with an outdoor kitchen, grill and fire pit.

The Country Kitchen is located on the first floor within the assisted living community. Additional dining venues are located within the assisted living and memory care areas.

The design also included more than 30,000 square-feet of common space with gas fireplaces, wood accents, antique-style rugs in-set to the floor for safety. The space also has subdued colors to create a warm, welcoming environment. Elements carried throughout include wood and stone accents, accompanying artwork and rustic farmhouse decor.

In total, planning, design and permitting of the project took 18 months prior to the start of construction in late 2020.

The Construction

Although the project moved forward in the early days of the pandemic when others did not, the pandemic and required safety protocols did complicate matters, Tye said. The project also required separating work crews to ensure physical distance and dealing with the occasional worker becoming sick. 

“But due to the good work of the general contractor, CE Floyd, the building had minimal downtime and met its target completion date,” Tye said.

That steady progression of work also paid off in the end, with no significant design changes being made during the build, he added.

The project was completed within its allocated budget and took approximately 20 months. National Development did not disclose the total cost for the community.

The Completion

Waterstone on High Ridge opened in January 2022. The finished 146-unit community was “exactly as planned,” Tye said, with lease-up “far ahead of projections” prior to opening.

“Prospective residents rave about the design of the building and find that it is comfortable, contemporary but also provides features catered to the needs of senior adults,” Tye said.

Today, the community offers connections to nature and a sense of openness and freedom. At the same time, it also has intimate space to socialize and interact, according to Waterston at High Ridge Executive Director Wendy Kaufman.

“There’s a grand feeling when you walk in,” Kaufman said. “There’s a warm feeling as you go in and enter the different lobbies. It’s nothing like entering into a sterile environment.”

Today, all of the community’s dining venues serve farm-to-table meals and include fare made with locally-sourced ingredients.

“Everywhere you look, there’s going to be a part of nature that’s unique and welcoming,” Kaufman said. “The outdoor dining makes it as if you’re in a garden and it’s all really fresh.”

Currently, the community is at 80% occupancy, Kaufman said, which is ahead of the projections by approximately 30%. Across the community’s continuum of care, occupancy levels vary, she noted.

“We grew very quickly,” Kaufman said. “But we grew systematically and we saw move-in’s across each neighborhood each month.”

Eric Krull, executive vice president of THW Design, who served as a judge for the Architecture and Design Awards, said Waterstone was executed in a “straightforward and affordable fashion,” noting that good design doesn’t always mean higher cost.

“The use of warm architectural finishes such as the stone, wood timber, a splash of metal detailing and oversized windows blends the outdoor environment richly with the interior design of the dining venues. All these elements reinforce the design intent reminiscent of the traditional New England-style farmhouse,” Krull said.

Tye said Waterstone at High Ridge was “ truly a special building,” noting that the surrounding community had a need for quality senior living offerings in the Stamford area.

“In many ways it sets the bar for creativity in site reuse and quality of product,” he said.

The post Best Dining Renovation of 2022: Raising the Bar on Resident Choice appeared first on Senior Housing News.

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