Change is afoot at Willow Valley Communities.
The Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based senior living operator has several next-generation projects underway, including an urban high-rise development and memory care project.
In downtown Lancaster, Willow Valley is moving forward with a high-rise development known as Mosaic that is planned to span 20 floors and will offer future residents multiple options, including 16 floorplans that range from 1,592 square-feet to 3,338 square-feet.
The organization is also moving forward on a new memory care community, the Marlin and Doris Thomas Memory Center, on its Lakes community campus in Lancaster. Last year, project officials told SHN the project was partly inspired by The Hogeweyk in the Netherlands.
Residents will live in 14 households of 10 people each within a secure seven-acre campus. The community will also include a brain tech and assessment center, a “brain café,” and a caregiver resource and support hub. A public-facing adult day center will also be part of the project.
Those are not the only recent changes at Willow Valley. The operator hired Lisa Hawthorne as CEO in June, a senior living veteran with nearly three decades of experience in the industry.
But change is not daunting to Hawthorne, who said expansion and evolution is a “steady state” for the operator.
“They have been continually growing and innovating and changing over the 40 year history,” Hawthrone said during the most recent SHN Transform podcast.
Willow Valley Communities is a nonprofit, 55-plus life plan community in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with more than 1,600 independent living residences and nearly 500 supportive living beds. Across two campuses spanning 210 acres, the organization serves about 2,600 residents with the support of 1,600 team members.
Listen to the latest episode of Transform here.
The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
In her first 100 days as CEO:
I’m already about 30 days in and I can tell you that time has flown by and my focus really for the first 100 days, and beyond that as well, is really listening and building relationships and earning the trust of team members and residents here while getting integrated in the greater Lancaster County [area].
There’s a secret sauce that I’m trying to learn here, and I’m trying to learn that from many different perspectives, again, from team members and from residents, from board members and from my peers on the leadership team here, so that I can make sure we preserve the legacy and that culture as we move the organization forward.
I’ve got three goals: connection, clarity, and alignment. Connections are building relationships with residents, team members, and the greater community. Clarity is around what the immediate priorities are, because I’ve jumped on a train that’s already left the station and there’s a lot going on. I want to make sure I have a clear understanding of the most immediate priorities that require my attention so we don’t lose momentum on the important things we’re advancing right now.
And then alignment — alignment with the team and alignment with our board in terms of our direction, continuing forward in the near term, as well as setting the stage for longer-term visioning and planning.
On joining as CEO, using past experiences:
Through my consulting career, I have had the benefit of working with a large number of senior living organizations across the country and I’ve been able to see a lot. I’ve been able to be involved throughout my career in new startup developments and expansions, in repositioning restructurings, kind of the whole gamut of the life cycle of a life plan community operator.
It took listening to what the market is telling you, and we’re in a position to dust those plans off and pick up where they left off. The whole landscape has changed and that required a courageous pivot because they had land they were waiting to develop on.
We worked side-by-side with them to help them imagine a completely different new direction and it has proven to be a success and a testament to their ability to adapt to where the market was going and be able to pivot and do so in a really courageous way.
So I know I’m fortunate to be joining Willow Valley at a time when the organization’s already recognized nationally. I have to attribute the visionary leadership of John Swanson, who is my predecessor here, and what he has accomplished here at Willow Valley. Willow Valley is pretty incredible, and I think Willow Valley sort of a well-kept secret. John’s commitment to bold ideas and his courageous vision has mapped out a pretty strong and clear path forward for us. So again, I’m shepherding this vision forward.
On changing consumer expectations:
We’re serving three generations, 100-year-olds, folks in their 80s, and even in their 60s. At Willow Valley we literally have residents whose parents and grandparents lived here, siblings who live here, and team member families who are here. That’s a testament to the quality of Willow Valley and the trust generations have placed in us.
We’ve long positioned Willow Valley as a 55-plus community, and our average age at entry is now 76, younger than the national average. That has kept us on the leading edge of changing expectations and helps us anticipate what needs to come next from an operational perspective. One of our tenets is no diminished standard, whether it’s apartments, villas, townhomes, or the new Mosaic highrise. That also applies to lifestyle.
Willow Valley offers extensive opportunities, learning, art, culture and music, right here on campus, along with strong connections to Lancaster’s vibrant arts, dining and culture. From an operations perspective, culinary is impressive. Local Table, one of our fine-dining venues, stands up against any restaurant, and we have nearly 20 venues, always evolving to delight residents and their families. We also have a state of the art fitness center and aquatic complex that is always busy. The opportunity ahead is integrating wellness in a way that makes the experience even more personal, because everyone wants something different out of this chapter, and we want to facilitate that for each resident.
On the current state of senior living staffing:
Well, I’ll get the most challenging part out of the way, because it’s pretty much the same for most organizations. It’s in the clinical areas and in the culinary areas. But we are fortunate to have some really long-tenured team members here, a lot of growth from within, and really a solid workforce. When I think about expansion and change, certainly there’s change with my arrival as the new leader, and I’m working to develop those relationships all the way down to the front line.
Expansion and change is kind of a steady state around Willow Valley, because they have been continually growing and innovating over the 40-year-history. I’m not sure there’s ever been much of a period that you would call status quo here, and I think people are accustomed to that. Some of our growth and expansion is creating exciting opportunities for people to build their careers. At the same time, maintaining the culture and an environment where team members are empowered, heard, and appreciated is always a top priority.
Our teams are working on improved learning and development opportunities and improved onboarding and orientation programs, so that people will want to spend a career here. We are fortunate that many people have chosen to spend their careers here, and we don’t take that for granted. We can never stop doing the things that keep folks engaged with us.
Willow Valley’s newest projects underway:
The SouthPointe expansion is a 124-unit expansion on the Lakes campus and it will be four buildings when it’s complete; it’s completely sold out already. Two buildings are completed and fully occupied and the other two buildings will be coming online over the next handful of months with the first occupancy in September.
Mosaic is the downtown expansion, the urban expansion. This is going to provide an opportunity for people who prefer an urban lifestyle, people who already live in a highrise or who lived in a high-rise at one point in their lives and desire to engage in that local, vibrant city of Lancaster, and so, it’s really more of a different kind of lifestyle.
It will probably be another three years before we’ll be able to welcome the first resident, so we’re going to be busy with those projects for the foreseeable future. Now let me talk for a moment about the Marlin and Doris Thomas Memory Center. It’s a village-style living environment that is designed to really destigmatize dementia and enhance quality of life, provide opportunities to educate the broader community on brain health and also what it’s like to be living with dementia.
Our team visited more than 40 memory care communities across the United States and in Europe, including The Hogeweyk in the Netherlands. So this is going to be something that has not been seen before, certainly in Pennsylvania and the eastern part of the U.S. That is under construction and will be opening the middle of next year and so we’re working on staffing and programming and we have partnerships that are coming together to provide what will be a state of the art environment.
On optimism for the future, ‘compelling’ trends
Well, I’m optimistic. Let’s talk for a moment about the demographics. We know the demographics are overwhelming and compelling, but only if you have what people want. We can’t just expect that because the numbers are overwhelming, they’re going to come to us. We have to continue to provide the lifestyle that people are looking for.
I do believe that as we are already serving the boomer population, we’re not preparing for the baby boomers anymore. They’re here, and they’re already right here at Willow Valley.
They are really redefining what retirement, which I’m putting in air quotes because that’s not a word in our vocabulary anymore, what that looks and feels like.
I’m excited that we will have a variety of choices, and I look forward to seeing how we can take to the next level some of the programming that we have here, specifically around wellness, maybe a more holistic view to wellness that is personalized for each individual.
