Real estate services and investment company Foundry Commercial has forged a joint venture with Foster Senior Living to acquire, develop and manage senior living communities.
Through this JV — dubbed FSL Senior Living Ventures — the two companies will jointly own and manage communities. The JV is structured roughly as a 50/50 partnership, with Foster Senior Living handling operations and Foundry taking the lead on capital and transactions, Kevin Maddron, healthcare principal at Foundry, told Senior Housing News.
Springfield, Missouri-based Foster Senior Living is a family owned and operated business that is a seasoned developer and currently manages 20 assets across seven states, offering independent living, assisted living and memory care. Orlando-based Foundry has more than 350 employees, more than 58 million square feet of management and leasing across the Southeast United States and Texas, and has an integrated development and investment platform.
Maddron’s relationship with the Foster family dates back nearly 15 years. At that time, he was with real estate investment trust CNL, which acquired some Foster Senior Living assets, he told SHN.
Foundry initially was affiliated with CNL but today is fully independent. Still, Maddron’s relationship with Foster Senior Living endured through the years and helped pave the way for the new joint venture.
Currently, the JV manages four assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing assets for “a sophisticated institutional owner,” with a fifth asset slated to be added next month.
Going forward, FSL Senior Living Ventures is open to third-party management if the “fit” is right and there is an economic alignment, Maddron told SHN. The JV is also looking to do acquisitions and new development.
Maddron believes the timing is right to start FSL Senior Living Ventures for several reasons. For the last three or four years, with labor costs increasing and other challenges related to market dynamics, some senior housing developments have struggled to meet pro-forma expectations, he noted. Meanwhile, developers are facing debts that are coming due. Covid-19 will exacerbate those issues.
“There are some assets that will end up needing to be either restructured from a capital stack or repositioned with a different owner or operator,” Maddron said. “We’re hoping to be able to participate in that.”
FSL is willing to bring in co-investment dollars on acquisitions, so could help place equity looking for a home. Currently, Foundry does not have senior housing developments underway, but is pursuing over $1.5 billion in developments on its platform overall, working with a variety of institutional partners. Extending these partnerships to create future senior living opportunities could be a “natural progression,” Maddron observed. And Foster Senior Living, for its part, is also an experienced developer and currently has one project underway that is separate from the JV with Foundry.
Foundry also brings its connections across other types of health care real estate. For instance, the company has close ties with several regional health systems. These health system relationships could ultimately inform partnerships or other initiatives with FSL Senior Living, but probably not in the near term given the Covid-19 pressures across the health care continuum, Maddron said.
Expect FSL Senior Living Ventures to concentrate on the Southeast and Midwest, which are markets where Foundry and Foster Senior Living already have footprints. The partnership has the expertise to do full-continuum of buildings, not only with independent living, assisted living and memory care, but also with skilled nursing components. Foster Senior Living began as a skilled nursing provider, Maddron noted.
Overall, Foster Senior Living is a nimble regional operator that historically has maintained strong occupancy, he said.
“They bring an attention and level of detail, particularly as it relates to transitional assets, that we think you may not necessarily get from a large national platform,” he told SHN.
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