Discovery Senior Living’s growth is continuing with the launch of a regional management company dedicated to overseeing communities in the Midwest.
The new management company, LakeHouse Senior Living, is establishing a foothold for Bonita Springs, Florida-based Discovery’s communities across Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The launch was executed with the new company now managing numerous communities, along with folding in existing properties in the region.
“This addition represents the continuation in our multi-year strategic efforts to marry the best of customized local community management with the support of a robust and sophisticated business process curated at the parent company level,” CEO Richard Hutichinson said in a news release announcing the new brand.
As its own entity, LakeHouse will operate as a local management company with a full executive team and benefit from being connected with Discovery’s Florida headquarters for additional support.
Brad Poterack was appointed chief operating officer (COO) and brings nearly three decades of experience to the role. He most recently served as senior vice president of operations for Enlivant beginning in 2019.
The LakeHouse portfolio consists of 36 communities in secondary markets across the Midwest, and will be contained to “between 30 and 40 communities maximum” to ensure smooth operations and future growth. Of the communities, some are a mix of former Enlivant properties recently transitioned to Discovery, Hutchinson confirmed.
In an email to Senior Housing News, Hutchinson said the launch of LakeHouse is a continuation of a multi-year strategy to create a “complimentary nationwide network of regional management companies” that operate in secondary markets.
“Our strategy of combining the best of local market understanding and operations with the scaled ability to provide a sophisticated business process that allows for consistent earnings growth at the property level continues to be our focus,” Hutchinson wrote in the email. “This unique strategy specifically allows us to take advantage of scale, while improving operational performance, which has been a difficult proposition in this industry thus far.”
“The transferred former Enlivant communities allows us enough scale to formally ‘stand up’ the LakeHouse management company, which has a complete vertical of management personnel including local operations, sales, marketing, facilities, care and culinary professionals,” Hutchinson said in the email to SHN.
In the short-term, Hutchinson added that the LakeHouse brand would now focus its efforts on improving performance of the existing portfolio through census gain, capital expense projects and some re-branding marketing initiatives, while reducing costs of daily operations.
Discovery has nearly 300 communities in its growing portfolio.
Earlier this year, Discovery underwent a recapitalization with Lee Equity and Coastwood, effectively joining Integral Senior Living to Discovery’s hip. The recap harkens back to a similar effort by Lee Equity in supporting Aimbridge Hospitality that helped transform the company into the nation’s largest independent hotel management companies. Discovery’s drumbeat for growth has been on a steady pace since early 2022, as reported by Senior Housing News.
Bringing ISL and Discovery together in effect creates the fifth-largest operator in the country with 27,000 units managed across 36 states. Discovery acts as a parent company to ISL and supports operations in the same way it does its other brands, including Discovery Management Group, Morada Senior Living and TerraBella Senior Living.
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