Experience Senior Living has reached an operational and growth milestone for its management platform, and now the company is looking ahead to its next phase of expansion.
The Denver-based senior living operator — which is affiliated with NexCore Group, one of the largest health care real estate investors and developers in the country — is now managing nine communities, with several more due to open in the next 90 days, according to Experience Senior Living CEO Phill Barklow.
The company has increased occupancy at all of its communities this year, with some of them having grown census “significantly” in that time — “one of the harder things that I’ve done in my 30-year career,” Barklow said.
“We’ve stabilized several of them, and another few are on the way to stabilization here in the next few months,” he told Senior Housing News.
Barklow said the company preferred to take a more hands-on approach with staffing to ensure quality of service delivery. Part of that stabilization process has involved significantly trimming using agency-sourced staffers inside the communities, he added.
With its first crop of communities in a good place, Experience is now looking to its next round of growth. The company is slated to in the next 90 days open another three communities in Colorado, Virginia and Washington.
At the time of its launch in 2022, Experience Senior Living’s plan was to have multiple brands offering a variety of price points and build scale. The company now has five:
- The Crossing, which focuses on smaller assisted living and memory care communities in the Midwest
- Sancerre, which focuses on middle market assisted living and memory care between 100 and 130 units
- The Gallery, which focuses on the arts for independent living, assisted living and memory care with 150 to 300 apartment units
- The Reserve, which is the company’s high end luxury brand
- And Active55, which are age-restricted apartment buildings.
Barklow said with five brands, “that is where we’re going to stop.” But that doesn’t mean the company will stop growing. The plan for the coming years is to grow its presence with an additional 10 to 15 communities slated to be announced in the coming years.
“We have more ground-breaks that we will be announcing before the end of the year,” Barklow said.
With the communities in Broomfield, Colorado, Richmond, Virginia. and Spokane, Washington, there has also been “significant interest in pre-leasing,” with Barklow citing occupancy ranging from 50% to 90%. The communities in question are anticipated to open before the end of the year.
“We are very excited about the platform and culture that we are creating, that we have that many residents attracted to us before we open our doors,” he said.
Looking to the future, Experience Senior Living’s plan is to use the groundbreakings to “open up capital markets” to get more developments going across the country. And all of NexCore’s new developments will be managed under one of the operator’s five brands.
“The way I see our company continuing to grow is continuing to focus on data and going into markets that are under supplied but have great demographics,” Barklow said.
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