Columbia Pacific’s China-based affiliate Cascade Healthcare is partnering with one of China’s largest real estate developers and has a more than $100 million pipeline of senior care facilities in the works, including one that will open this year.
The partnership with Sino-Ocean Land, announced Tuesday, marks the first time a foreign senior living operator has worked with a leading Chinese developer and “creates a new model for the senior living industry in China,” according to Seattle-based Columbia Pacific.
The joint venture’s first project together will be a senior care community in southeast Beijing. Senior Living L’Amore—Kaijian (Cascade Healthcare goes by the trade name ‘Kaijian’ in China) will be a 60,000-square-foot building constructed in Sino-Ocean’s Ocean Palace luxury residential housing community in the Yizhuan area of Beijing.
Slated to open this summer, the 110-bed community will provide residential senior care services to Chinese seniors, adapting international standards of management and care to local Chinese cultural norms.
The two entities of the Sino-Foreign Joint Venture will each contribute 50% of the registered capital of the new facility, and will jointly oversee project operations.
Columbia Pacific has a more than $100 million pipeline of projects throughout the country, not including additional plans to develop and operate private hospitals in China based on experience creating Columbia Asia, a network of 23 hospitals in India and Southeast Asia, says Nate McLemore, managing director of Columbia Pacific.
“A significant number of [the projects] are with Sino-Ocean, but it is not an exclusive relationship,” he says of the senior care pipeline.
Much of the initial financing for these projects is provided through existing Columbia Pacific funds, according to McLemore, but there are plans to raise a larger Columbia Pacific China Healthcare Fund in the coming months.
Cascade Healthcare opened the first foreign-owned senior care community in China in October 2012, Shanghai Kaijian Huazhan Senior Care Service. The Columbia Pacific-affiliated entity is the first fully-licensed foreign-invested senior care company in China and will open its third senior care community in the Pudong District of Shanghai this fall.
The field for U.S. senior living operators and developers expanded when the Chinese government changed its Foreign Direct Investment laws a few years ago to encourage foreign investment into senior care facilities.
“Since that time there have been additional policies at the provincial, city and local government levels to encourage the development of senior care facilities,” says McLemore. “Providing adequate housing and services for China’s aging population is a public policy priority at all levels of the government.”
Seattle-based Emeritus Corp. has a strategic partnership with Columbia Pacific to provide Cascade Healthcare with support in planning and layout; interior design and furnishings; selection and purchasing of specialty equipment; training of facility executive directors, nurses, and caregivers; development of operating policies and procedures; and successful integration of hospitality and healthcare services.
Written by Alyssa Gerace
Companies featured in this article:
Cascade Healthcare, Columbia Pacific Advisors, Emeritus, Sino-Ocean Land
