Avalon Park has always been a community for the ages – literally. With faciltities that range from daycare centers to tween boutiques and sports bars, Avalon appeals to a wide variety of age groups.
But, next year, Avalon Park Group will begin to integrate another age group into the community even more than they already have by building a three-story elderly living facility that will be placed near Downtown Avalon Park.
Next year will bring a senior-centered community to Downtown Avalon Park, courtesy of Avalon Park Group.
“Avalon is, for a lack of a better term, a cradle to grave community; you can be born here, you can live here, you can die here,” says Ross Halle, vice president of architecture for the Town Planning of Avalon Park Group. “To build a complete town, it was always thought that we needed to build all the living quarters for all the stages of life. Generally, it was a concept of the town, which is you have to provide all those various life stage living opportunities.”
According to Halle, the assisted living facility for seniors will be a 3-story, 80,000-square-foot building in the middle of the Avalon Park town center, across from Publix. It will be composed of 90 units, with 60 of those units dedicated to memory care and the remaining 30 units dedicated to assisted living. He explains that, within the building, it will break down into six smaller “neighborhoods” each consisting of 15 units. Each neighborhood will have a living room, a dining room, a spa and other activity areas.
In addition to that, its residents will have physical therapy and occupational facilities, a beauty salon, a health and wellness area, a community garden and an outdoor public courtyard for events.
An outreach room is one of the main amenities that will be offered to the seniors as well. “Our goal is reaching out to the community and getting them involved and having a facility for them to be involved in,” says Halle.
Recently, the development world has gotten back into realizing that senior living facilities are a viable market for various reasons, according to Halle. “There is a huge gap in the market place, as baby boomers age, how they’re going to be taken care of because there’s not enough facilities to take care of them as a population,” he says.
Halle says that right now the strongest need is memory care. In the upcoming project, it will be one of their main focuses because the safety concerns that come with it.
“The demand for memory care is something that is really lacking and really needed because it’s that that stage where people are at the most risk of wandering and being lost and never being found,” he says.
