A senior living project has transformed a nine-acre senior living campus in the heart of San Francisco into a new “social oasis” where wellness is at the forefront.
The project, long anticipated and completed in 2021, added several new features to the 130-year-old San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living campus. The project included three parks, green space and a new 50,000 square foot community center designed as a hub for meaningful connections between residents and the surrounding community.
The project’s underlying goal was to get residents out of their homes and into shared spaces, according to Jason Erdahl, principal and director of senior communities at Ankrom Moisan, the design firm on the project.
“We wanted to encourage opportunities for residents to have spontaneous interactions and we were able to do that,” Erdahl told Senior Housing News. “We wanted people to feel excited and motivated by the design and we wanted to bring as much green space in as possible, bringing the outside in as much as possible.”
That forward-thinking project earned the San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living a first-place spot on the 2022 SHN Architecture and Design Awards in the Wellness: Health and Fitness category.
The Concept
The project’s roots go back to 2013, when the San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living (SFCJL) was facing a dire financial outlook that required a radical reinvention.
That reinvention led to a new vision for the campus, bringing intergenerational connectivity front and center to the community by offering the public access to outside programming. Their evaluation also led them to envision a more “permeable model, and these additions together form Byer Square, which is the name SFCJL has given to the combination of services and amenities that will be available to everyone who lives in the Frank Residences as well as to anyone who pays for a membership.
SFCJL tapped Ankrom Moisan to aid in the project’s design, starting with a master-plan design process that, with effort, met the city’s tricky entitlements and permitting requirements process, Erdahl said, citing the extensive amount of time it took to get shovels in the ground for the latest expansion. Ankrom Moisan also worked as the project’s interior design firm.
Designing a community to be located in the heart of one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country wasn’t easy, but the community was starting with a favorable position.
“Having a 9-acre site in San Francisco is very, very rare and we had an opportunity to transform, adapt and diversify,” Erdahl said. “[Byer][ Square was planned and built to include services and amenities to serve seniors and to promote intergenerational activities.”
Eventually, the project planners arrived on a concept to add a new community center with a performance center, a fitness center, warm-water therapeutic pool, pilates studio, salon and spa, a cafe and coffee bar, and outdoor spaces. The expansion also included a 190-unit assisted living and memory care community called Frank Residences.
An overarching goal of the project’s design, Erdahl said, was to connect residents with the public in a variety of engaging settings, including classrooms, a library, craft rooms, theater and spa and salon amenities.
Today, residents are hungry for more social engagement after being cooped up inside early in the pandemic But even prior to the pandemic, the design team was conscious of the impacts of social isolation on seniors, Erdahl said. That is why the community center was designed to be public-facing.
“It was right at the concept of what we were trying to do and focus on breaking that isolation and focusing on ways to help get people who might feel that way out of their homes,” Erdahl said.
The project also included three parks, and it was a goal of the design team to connect residents with the outdoors — a concept also known as biophilic design.
That commitment to incorporating nature into the project’s design puts the project on the cutting edge of senior living, with an emphasis on natural light and finding “the natural rhythm of the day” to influence resident wellness. That led to the design team emphasizing the flooring, color schemes and extensive use of natural lighting, Erdahl said.
The Construction
Construction began in 2018, with Cahill Contractors leading that stage of the process.
While the project initially was expected to open in late 2020, the pandemic delayed it by several months. That, plus the cost of building materials, sent the project’s construction costs about10% higher than originally budgeted.
But “the team was able to anticipate the difficulties of working on an existing campus and created plans that avoided conflicts that increased the project costs,” Erdahl said.
Overall, construction took three years to complete and wrapped up in late 2021. Adding underground parking was a challenge — as it is in many similar projects — but it was a key feature to building in so much green space, he added.
During construction, crews dismantled older facilities on the campus to make way for the new community center. But it wasn’t just a demolition job — they also made sure to take design fixtures and other elements out of the older buildings to be reused around the campus, including built-in art that needed to be preserved.
“We didn’t have any major changes once we got through the plan and decided what we were going to do,” Erdahl said. “I think the team executed it really well.”
Overall project costs ran to $180 million, with construction costs accounting for two-thirds of that sum, Erdahl estimated.
The Completion
Now open, the community center has classrooms, a performing arts auditorium, a bistro and cafe, a technology lounge, theater and library. The community also includes a wellness center that specializes in fitness, aerobics and water therapy.
At the center of the community is a “town center,” where today residents can gather and sign up for classes or other activities, which take place all on one floor in a spacious area inside that helps residents and visitors better navigate the campus.
The overall project was a “well-conceived program,” Perkins Eastman Principal Joe Hassel said in his judges comments on the design.
“The provider’s mission and program, site location and the design clearly does strengthen ties between the provider, residents, and the surrounding community,” Hassel said.
Perhaps the greatest mark of success is replication, and Erdahl said Ankrom Moisan designers will draw upon the project with SFCJL and use it as a reference for others down the road.
“It’s an innovative approach to health and fitness, promoting holistic wellness for all ages,” Erdahl said.
The post Best Wellness Health and Fitness Design of 2022: Building a Social Oasis in San Francisco appeared first on Senior Housing News.
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