‘Resort like’ assisted living facility planned for Brookstone Centre

An Atlanta developer is partnering with a Columbus investment group to construct an $18 million assisted living and memory care community in the city’s Brookstone Centre.

The facility that will be on 15 acres of land at Lake Brook Court in the office and medical park off J.R. Allen Parkway on the city’s north side is expected to open by fall 2018. It will be adjacent to the Hilton Garden Inn located inside the park.

“We’re still in our pre-development stages. We’ll likely begin the process of permitting, clearing and doing the site work, I suspect, in the next 60 days,” Rajesh Shah of Atlanta-based The Diwan Group LLC, said by phone Friday.

Shah is working with a Columbus-based investment group led by businessman Dhan Parekh and of which Columbus businessman and City Councilor Glenn Davis is a member. Past projects of the latter two include the Hilton Garden Inn and a Homewood Suites hotel on Whittlesey Boulevard. All three men have known each other more than two decades.

“They came to us and said we think Columbus is a real interesting market and wanted us to come down and take a look at it and give our thoughts and perspective on it,” Shah said of the assisted living community project that culminated after a year of research that included a third-party analysis.

“The analysis really came back with the impression that it’s a great market,” he said. “It’s a market that has a bit of aging supply and not a lot of new supply that’s coming to the market, and some really good demand in that area.”

The new development will include a three-story, 80-bed assisted living and memory care facility, along with 25 two-bedroom “independent living” residences with attached garages. The homes will be connected by walking trails and offer access to the primary structure and amenities that include daily meals, a social pub, activities and housekeeping service.

The developers say the setting will be “resort like” with its amenities and campus atmosphere. The primary building will have an open plaza overlooking a pond and a private garden for memory-care residents. The food will be “chef inspired,” it said, with there also being a coffee bar, theater room, hair salon and on-site physical therapy and physician rooms. An activities director will schedule excursions, plan religious services and organize “senior-focused” programs, it said.

“The natural setting of our assisted living and memory care community will exist for one purpose, to provide seniors the care and resources they need for a fulfilling, exciting and more independent lifestyle,” Parekh and Shah said in a joint statement.

The projected cost for construction of the Brookstone Centre facility will be somewhere between $15 million and $18 million, Shah said Friday. He also noted that his group is taking direct aim at the nearby upscale Spring Harbor at Green Island continuing care and retirement facility.

“Spring Harbor is the target competition,” he said. “They clearly are the premiere provider in the community. They’ve got a great facility and a great premise. While we might not be as large in terms of seven or eight stories and a large footprint, I can say that our plans from interior finishing and build-out and trim, we will be right on par, if not nicer than Spring Harbor.”

But Shah also believes that there is room for both his groups’ project and Spring Harbor amid a wave of senior and assisted living facilities being built across the United States. Developers are only meeting demand with quality projects that are replacing antiquated facilities and nursing homes.

“I think that a lot of people have the sense that the nursing homes of the 1970s and the 1980s is kind of what the industry is today, and that’s really not the case,” he said. “We’ve got active adult lifestyle communities targeted to people 55 and over ... It’s a good trend that’s coming, that’s needed in a lot of communities.”

Aside from various business offices, Brookstone Centre is home to various medical and therapeutic in the areas of general and specialty doctors, dermatology, eye care, orthodontists and massage therapy.

The Diwan Group, which bought an Atlanta-area assisted living facility nearly four years ago, plans to develop more such communities across the Southeast in the coming years, Shah said.

This story was originally published June 23, 2017 at 4:40 PM with the headline "‘Resort like’ assisted living facility planned for Brookstone Centre."