Leaders of Cedarhurst Senior Living are continuing to develop new senior living communities while weighing future acquisition opportunities across the Midwest as the company nears the 60-community mark.
Today, Cedarhurst oversees a portfolio of over 55 communities, with a handful of projects underway across the Midwest. The St. Louis-based senior living provider is the operating company owned by The Dover Companies. Dover Companies include Cedarhurst Senior Living, Dover Development, Dover Capital, Dover Health and Brahms Construction.
In 2026, Cedarhurst Senior Living is focused on delivering consistency and quality across all its communities and service lines to improve the lives of older adults, according to The Dover Companies CEO Joshua Jennings.
Aiming to meet boomer demand, changing operations
The senior living industry is beginning to see the influx of baby boomer older adults as the first of the generation turn 80 this year, and the sector must adapt as they adjust services and personalize offerings.
The boomers are “a more demanding client,” while also interacting with boomers as the adult children to their parents in need of senior living services, bringing with them more information about communities and living options than in the past, Jennings said.
“We’re changing how we communicate and build trust and we’re trying to engage with them in a way where they feel comfortable trusting us to care for their loved ones,” Jennings told Senior Housing News.
As operators deal with a “more informed, digitally driven consumer,” they must provide information on services, care offerings and programming to show transparency and build trust, Jennings said.
Operationally, Jennings sees managing rising costs as a big hurdle for all providers in 2026 and beyond, combined with the need to recruit and retain top talent.
“We need to fill every position with the best possible person available,” Jennings said.
Staffing conditions, including recruitment and retention, have improved since 2024, Jennings said, where several Cedarhurst Senior Living communities today are receiving more job applications per available position. This allows the provider to be “choosy” in new hiring. The industry’s biggest competitors for licensed clinical staff are health systems, Jennings said.
If operators are having staffing issues in 2026 that remain persistent, Jennings said he believes the issue could be rooted in culture and workplace environment issues.
Future growth: Development vs. acquisitions
Jennings said acquisitions are an attractive way to grow in 2026. Many properties trading hands today are communities that “should have never been built, or were built incorrectly,” he said.
Cap rates for new acquisitions have “dropped significantly” this year, which has increased the number of properties for sale, Jennings noted.
“So we went from not a lot worth buying to seeing a lot of opportunity in the market that’s actually very attractive,” Jennings said.
While acquisitions in the Midwest could be possible in the near future, most of Cedarhurst Senior Living’s growth has come through new development. While development remains muted across the industry, with new starts at record lows, Cedarhurst Senior Living has executed on multiple projects in the last three years and has new builds underway across the Midwest.
“We are active in development, but I believe the bulk of our growth in 2026 and 2027 is going to come from acquisition opportunities,” Jennings said.
A recent acquisition included a senior living community in Louisville, Kentucky late last year for an assisted living and memory care property. The building is a Class A stabilized community with occupancy above 90%, Jennings said.
The challenge with acquisitions is what happens after a deal is completed. While a building may have a good layout, there could be too many studio units or not enough common area space, resulting in capital expenditures to make a community competitive, Jennings said. While that’s a viable option, and one operators have used to grow in recent years, Jennings stressed that Cedarhurst Senior Living has “always been most successful” in the company’s properties it has designed and built.
An ideal acquisition or development for Cedarhurst Senior Living spans between 90 and 150 units and “anything that has assisted living in it,” while also including independent living and memory care components.
The company has continued on its development push based on long-term confidence in the demographics behind the U.S. aging population and future demand for senior living, Jennings said. Cedarhurst Senior Living, in connection with the Dover family of companies, has built over 30 communities since 2015.
“We believe that if you build it, they will come,” Jennings said.
Today, “the majority” of the company’s communities are at 90% occupancy, and Cedarhurst Senior Living has come back to add new additions or expansions to support incoming demand, alongside new builds. Recent expansion projects include independent living cottages on existing campuses.
Cedarhurst Senior Living recently opened a new community in Crown Point, Indiana and another community in Wentzville, Missouri. The Crown Point community includes 90 assisted living and memory care units with room for a future independent living cottages expansion. The Wentzville property spans 140 units of independent living, assisted living and memory care.
These properties represent the “two prototypes” Cedarhurst Senior Living takes on for new development, Jennings said. As of May, the company has five communities under construction currently, with five additional projects in the initial planning and design phases.
Supporting this appetite for development is the company’s vertically integrated structure with The Dover Companies. Through that structure, the operator is able to bring capital and construction expertise to bear for making future projects pencil out, rather than needing outside relationships.
“Development doesn’t work in probably 95% of the markets in the country right now,” Jennings said. “We’ve been blessed that we know where our product works and where it doesn’t. It’s finding these pockets that make sense.”
Where projects work out today include high-barrier-to-entry markets, along with tertiary markets, Jennings noted.
Meeting high-acuity demand, protecting value
Assisted living is the “core” of the company’s business model, and Jennings believes that demand will help support it in the years to come. But needs-based senior living is not immune to challenges, such as the high cost of those services, he said. He added he thinks older adults in recent years have done more to stay home if the cost of senior living is too high. Navigating higher acuity today also means more complex operations.
Jennings said he believes that assisted living residents today are older adults who may have received skilled nursing care two decades ago. This higher-acuity reality is one that Cedarhurst is prepared for with clinical care expertise at the core of the company’s value proposition to older adults, Jennings said.
Cedarhurst Senior Living aims to be the “premier provider” in its markets, and Jennings acknowledged that the company’s rental rates can sometimes make it the “most expensive provider,” but the tradeoff in higher rates comes in the form of quality staffing, clinical expertise , programming and amenities, he said.
While rate growth has moderated from back-to-back years of double-digit rate increases, Jennings said the industry must protect the value proposition of senior living, trading off affordability for best-in-class service offerings.
In the months ahead, Jennings said Cedarhurst Senior Living would continue to monitor development conditions to gauge whether to take on more development or new acquisitions, while also monitoring the advancement of technology and artificial intelligence.
“We have to ask how we want to deploy that effectively,” Jennings said.