New Rose Villa CEO Glen Lewis sees opportunities ahead for the Portland, Oregon-based life plan community to grow and attract the incoming generation of older adults.
Lewis joined the organization in April of this year, having previously worked as an executive director with Aegis Living and WesleyLife before coming to the life plan community.
Over the years, Rose Villa has made a name for itself with forward-thinking and sustainable projects, including pocket neighborhoods and green communities designed to offset their environmental footprint.
The life plan community recently completed the development of two new buildings with updated community amenities as part of a decade-long master planning process. The addition was recognized by Senior Housing News in the 2024 Architecture and Design Awards.
Rose Villa will continue that kind of growth in “small increments,” Lewis said. He noted that future projects would be of a similar scope to the most recent expansion — bite-sized projects that minimally disrupt resident life at the 22-acre campus.
“We’re talking about the progressive nature of Rose Villa thinking differently about senior housing, and that’s what excited me most about coming here,” Lewis told SHN.
The expansion has “evolved” Rose Villa and positioned the community for further growth, aimed at attracting a unique older adult customer base that would be intrigued by Rose Villa’s eco-friendly neighborhoods with features like recirculating water systems. Resident-led committees played a key role in the initial planning stages of the most recent expansion.
“We’ve started to see a high level of engagement and involvement from residents, not only in continuing to live a life with minimal impact on the environment but also in evolving Rose Villa and being engaged in the process operationally as well as in design and future development,” Lewis said. “We have a significantly deep waiting list, and we know we need to grow in some way, shape, or form.”
With increasing popularity among its zero-emissions units, Lewis sees a path ahead for future development for the 400-person resident base.
“When I think about our future, I think about what we are going to do to make a difference in our local community, our macro community, and potentially in senior living globally,” Lewis said. “That’s the lens I am asking our executive team to look through.”
Looking ahead, Lewis said nonprofit senior living providers face challenges in staffing, operations, and finding ways to cost-effectively prevent steep fee increases for residents—something he called “not sustainable” in the long run.
Going forward, Lewis said he also wants to elevate the life plan community’s philanthropic foundation to ensure residents have the means to age in place if they outlive their financial resources, while also adding “soft benefits” for employees, such as a student loan repayment program or a potential immigrant rehousing program to bring workers onto the campus. Other plans could include an adult day clinic to expand services to broader Portland residents.
When future development occurs, Lewis stressed that Rose Villa would remain committed to sustainability practices and environmental standards, keeping in line with the life plan community’s long history of environmental conservation.
“I think we have a responsibility to do it in a way that minimizes harm to the environment in which we live, in this beautiful place that we get to call home,” Lewis said.
To achieve this, Lewis said Rose Villa is in the midst of drafting a 5- to 10-year “resiliency action plan” to explore avenues for future redevelopment and operational changes. For example, after a garage fire earlier this year, leadership chose not to simply rebuild the garage but to work with a designer to create a new garage that could capture rainwater runoff or operate using solar power.
Across the continuum, Lewis sees opportunities in independent living growth and further expansion of the community’s zero-energy neighborhoods, which he said would be a “no-brainer” for Rose Villa to pursue in the future. On the other end of the continuum, Lewis could also see the addition of a small component of skilled nursing beds to accommodate residents as they age in place.
“We’re investigating and evaluating our options right now,” Lewis said.
He added that the life plan community could be an “incubation zone” for new technology in aging. The company has a new partnership with WalkWise, a medical technology manufacturer based in North Dakota, to bring devices on walkers and wheelchairs that provide health data insights on resident movement. This has helped care staff identify anomalies in residents’ gait and can flag those individuals for assessment or additional care services.
Another company, Camino, will bring electric-powered mobility devices for Rose Villa residents to test.
“We put care interventions in place that we wouldn’t have had without those insights,” Lewis said. “It’s an incubation zone, so it’s fantastic to be able to create these partnerships.” A third tech partnership will be announced by Rose Villa later this year, Lewis added.
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