Assisted Senior Living Goes Modular

Elite Care Assisted Senior Living has gone modular!

The campuses are Fanno Creek in Tigard, with 24 residential suites; Oatfield Estates in Milwaukie, Oregon, with 96 suites; and Sylvan Park in Vancouver, with 48 suites.

Elite Care also plans to open a 24-suite modular campus next year in Tigard called Elite Care at Knoll Summit and a 48-suite campus called Elite Care at Oak Hills in Salem, Oregon, in December 2016.

The suites are in buildings that look like houses. Most of them are LEED for Homes platinum — and the company is targeting that level of LEED for all its developments.

Elite Care plans more campuses in Oregon, he said, and to expand into northern California, where it has investors and relationships with Sutter Health hospital system. It does not have immediate plans for more Washington campuses.

Elite Care residents living in assisted senior living are in physical and/or cognitive decline, with 84 percent having some form of dementia. They are anywhere from 55 to 104 years old (although the average age is 88) and they typically are in the last three to five years of life.

They need help with what is known in the industry as activities of daily living. That’s anything from brushing their hair to showering or using the toilet.

Utilities are a “huge” cost for assisted-living facilities, and creating high-performance buildings, as Elite Care does, cuts those costs and helps the company lessen its carbon footprint.

Green features in the residential senior living area and on the campuses include high-efficiency insulation, high-efficiency air conditioners, rainwater use in lavatories and community gardens, low-flow plumbing, tankless water heaters that service radiant piping beneath the floor, low-VOC carpeting and zero-VOC paint, triple-pane windows, Energy Star rated fans and appliances, and recycled concrete in retaining walls and gardens