Springfield Business Journal: “Business Spotlight: Home for Life” (The Fremont)

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Business Spotlight: Home for Life

With the addition of assisted living and memory care units, The Fremont extends its level of care for residents

Brian Hom, Contributing Writer

Monday, July 29, 2013 9:19 AM

Fresh off $5.6 million in expansion work, The Fremont Senior Living represents a new start.

After passing a state health inspection of the new 38,000 square feet, the latest licensure adds 56 assisted living and 16 memory care beds to the community, pushing The Fremont’s total residency to 127 units.

The three-year expansion process, which required rezoning and neighborhood approval, was spearheaded by architect H Design Group. Miller-O’Reilly Co., though recently divested, will continue its property management role for The Fremont, which Executive Director Brad Eldridge says he expects to reach capacity by year’s end.

Operated by Arrow Senior Living in St. Louis, The Fremont’s memory care unit is equipped with motion sensors in each of the 16 rooms. For residents with a shaky grip on cognizant reality, providing a comprehensive continuum of care means far more than three square meals, secure doors and watchful eyes.

Pointing to the wide-open layout of the memory care unit’s kitchen, Eldridge talks about such elements as the therapeutic properties of smell, which research has long-shown to be the tightest sensory link to long-term memory.

“What happens is amazing when the smell of some food cooking triggers a memory in someone,” he says. “You can immediately tell from their body language when that long-term cognitive association kicks in. It changes their whole demeanor.”

Jeff Tweten, a regional director for Arrow Senior Living, says anxiety from moving into senior living care has more to do with unfamiliar people than strange surroundings. With the addition of the assisted living and memory care units, long-term residents of The Fremont can step up their level of care without leaving their neighborhood.

“We call it Home for Life,” say Tweten, who has worked for Arrow since 2008. “It’s something that’s worked very well in our other facilities.”

Now operating three senior living communities in Springfield, St. Louis and Las Vegas, Arrow Senior Living got its start in the mid-2000s as Turnaround Solutions LLC, consulting in assessment, rehab and realignment of failing senior housing projects. Working around the country, Turnaround Solutions has restored dozens of companies to profitability, assembling a toolbox of senior housing best practices, many of which are implemented at The Fremont.

The team in Springfield is led by Eldridge, who took the job earlier this year. He succeeds John Sellars, who last fall returned to the director post at the Springfield-Greene County History Museum. Eldridge is known for managing the Ozark Mountain Ducks semiprofessional baseball team in the early 2000s and most recently managed Americare’s Lakewood assisted living and memory care properties in Springfield.

Eldridge says The Fremont is ramping up its staff of 15 by adding nurses, chefs, medication technicians and administrative workers to keep pace with increases in residents. He expects to be at capacity with 50 employees within six months.

Old problems
The U.S. senior population continues to swell, with census data from 2000–10 indicating an 18 percent increase in seniors 85 and older – the fastest-growing segment of the senior population. Concurrently, the incidence of dementia in individuals 65 and older is projected to nearly triple in the next 40 years to 13.8 million cases in 2050 from 4.7 million cases in 2010, according to the Journal of Neurology. National experts say dementia, which has quietly become the sixth leading cause of death among those 65 and older, will drastically increase in coming decades.

Brad Eldridge manages The Fremont Senior Living's 22 villas, 56 assisted living beds and 16 memory care beds.

The Fremont Senior Living

Owner: Arrow Senior Living
Founded: 2008
Address: 1520 E. Bates St., Springfield, MO 65804
Phone: (417) 881-0500
Web: TheFremontSeniorLiving.com
Email: ceador@arrowseniorliving.com
Services/Products: Senior living community, with 127 housing units, including assisted living and memory care accommodations
Employees: 15

Student Housing Business: The Latest News: “Miller O’Reilly Opens Two Communities at Missouri State” (Deep Elm & The Jefferson)

Click here to read Student Housing Business: http://www.studenthousingbusiness.com/miller-o-reilly-opens-two-communities-at-missouri-state

Springfield, Mo. — Miller O'Reilly Real Estate Developers have announced the opening of two new apartment developments, Deep Elm and The Jefferson, which both opened to students of Missouri State in August. The new projects arrived on the heels of The Monroe, which opened in fall 2011 and was sold to MSU in December 2012. Deep Elm and The Jefferson have recently launched websites. The properties offer bed-bath parity, and Deep Elm brings a building design that's new to the Springfield market. Miller O'Reilly says it pioneered by-the-bed-leasing strategy in Springfield with the introduction of Walnut Quads and The Monroe over the past two years.

Springfield Business Journal: “IDEA Commons tops $70M in development” (Brick City)

Brian Brown, Contributing Writer

Monday, February 04, 2013 8:32 AM

More than five years of planning and roughly $11.5 million has transformed the former Willow Brook Foods’ poultry processing facility into a resource for business startups and small firms looking for some help to reach their higher potentials.

In March, Missouri State University plans to unveil the Robert W. Plaster Center for Free Enterprise and Business Development as a key piece of IDEA Commons, an initiative to bring together innovation, design, entrepreneurship and the arts across 88 center city acres.

In all, the IDEA Commons urban park is expected to take at least 20 years and $100 million in public and private investments.

Allen Kunkel, MSU associate vice president for economic development and director of the Jordan Valley Innovation Center, said IDEA comprises three facilities focused on forwarding innovation in support of local business development: Brick City, home to university art and design classes and the future University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Pharmacy at MSU; JVIC, the research and development arm of the IDEA initiative; and the Plaster Center, where MSU’s business incubator and support service groups will work alongside the university’s printing and postal department and the cooperative engineering program between MSU and Missouri University of Science and Technology.   

The eFactory
The bulk of the 120,000-square-foot Plaster Center is dedicated to The eFactory, a business incubator collaborative between MSU and Springfield Innovation Inc. – the business resource division of JVIC. Springfield Innovation will manage the shared resources available to startups and small firms.

“The ideal candidates are startups or entrepreneurs who are still in the early stages of forming their company – someone who may be working out of their home or another location who may need more visibility or credibility – and need the services we can provide,” Kunkel said.

Brian Kincaid, The eFactory’s business incubator coordinator, said the concept is to serve as a one-stop shop for small and developing businesses seeking the space or educational resources needed to grow.

“We would typically like to see a business come in and go from idea to job creation to moving out into the community in three to five years, but there are no hard and fast rules,” Kincaid said, noting the university’s goal is to create 850 jobs in its first five years of the incubator’s operation.

Six companies have signed letters of intent to lease 10 of the 28 spaces available at The eFactory, he said. Declining to name the companies without lease agreements in place, Kincaid described them as centered on technology, Internet and software. In all, the offices available to small businesses range in size from 150 square feet to roughly 2,000 square feet.

He said lease terms for tenants would be flexible and designed to meet client needs, with opportunities for businesses to upgrade to larger office spaces as they grow.

Rayanna Anderson, director of MSU’s Small Business & Technology Development Center, said her small-business counseling and training staff would be a key resource for businesses at the Plaster Center.

SBDTC training largely focuses on financing and marketing topics. Anderson said training for executive-level certification programs, such as those for Certified Financial Planners and Certified Public Managers, would be housed at the Plaster Center through MSU’s Management Development Institute, which she also manages.

Other partners such as Score, a business-mentoring group of retired professionals, will operate in the building, and Kunkel said with so many entrepreneurially minded individuals, there could be opportunities for collaborative projects.

Pharm D. and beyond
On Jan. 16, MSU’s Board of Governors approved a sublease for nearly $250,000 per year of the 15,000-square-foot fourth floor at Brick City, Bldg. I, to the UMKC for its doctoral pharmacy program. MSU Vice President for Administrative and Information Services Ken McClure said MSU art and design students and faculty would begin to occupy the first three floors in July. UMKC, McClure said, would move into the fourth floor the following January, with classes expected to begin by fall semester 2014.

Kunkel said at least $60 million in public and private investment has been devoted to date to the JVIC facility and equipment inside the labs on Boonville Avenue – housing such tenants as Brewer Science and Crosslink – bringing investments at JVIC and the Plaster Center to more than $70 million.

McClure said rents on Brick City Bldgs. III and IV represent an investment of nearly $1.5 million, with another $600,000 in lease payments scheduled to begin on Bldg. I in July.

MSU has occupied Brick City Bldg. IV since 2008 and Bldg. III since 2011. The former Bldg. II is now green space, and the 5,000-square-foot Bldg. V is unoccupied.   

Under the agreement with Matt Miller Co., owner of the Brick City buildings, MSU will have the option to buy the properties in the sixth year of the of the 10-year lease.

MSU Provost Frank Einhellig has been working since 2007 to bring the state’s only accredited Pharm. D program to town. UMKC also partners with the University of Missouri-Columbia to train students in Columbia. Einhellig said the prospect of finding funding to start MSU’s own doctoral program was once briefly considered, but amid recession-imposed budget constraints, administrators opted to form a collaborative agreement with UMKC.

He said UMKC will run the program at Brick City, and MSU will funnel students who are looking for careers as pharmacists. He said MSU has been aware of a need for more pharmacists in the region for years, and having a program in town should go a long way toward filling local demand, especially in rural areas.

“We are trying to act not just as a good educational institution, but as a good partner with the community,” Einhellig said, noting the IDEA concept promotes economic development through a variety of means to benefit Springfield and the region. “Pharmacy is one of those areas.”

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“MSU VP straddles local, global economic development” (Brick City) - Springfield Business Journal

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Geoff Pickle, Web Producer

From downtown Springfield to western China, Jim Baker is making waves in economic development on a global scale.

Baker, vice president for research and economic development and international programs at Missouri State University, was interviewed this morning by Springfield Business Journal Editor Eric Olson as SBJ's first guest of the year for its monthly 12 People You Need to Know breakfast series.

At home, Baker is largely focused on the cultivation of IDEA Commons, an MSU-led movement focused on bringing together innovation, design, entrepreneurship and the arts in 88 center city acres.

What started with the 2007 construction of Jordan Valley Innovation Center has blossomed into leased space in Brick City and the development of the Robert W. Plaster Center for Free Enterprise and Business Development in the former Willow Brook Foods turkey processing plant. Baker estimated the completion of the initiative would take at least 20 years and $100 million in public and private investments.

The 120,000-square-foot Robert W. Plaster Center, which Baker said was purchased by MSU in 2009 for $2.8 million, is scheduled to open in March with a grand opening later this fall. The building is designed to house MSU's Small Business & Technology Development Center, offer class space for engineering students of Missouri University of Science and Technology and create a business incubator known as the E-Factory.

"Essentially what we're doing is establishing a one-stop shop for small businesses," Baker said. "We want small companies to become big companies."

During its Jan. 16 meeting, the MSU Board of Governors is scheduled to vote on whether to increase the budget for the phase two renovation of the Robert W. Plaster Center by $117,000 to $8.5 million.

Baker noted businesses would be asked to move out of the incubator after reaching a certain size to keep the cycle of startup to big business rolling along.

At leased space from Matt Miller Co. at Brick City, the university's art students attend classes, and a deal penned in late 2011 would allow the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Pharmacy to sublease space in the building from MSU to open a satellite school likely starting next fall. The board of governors is scheduled to approve or disapprove the sublease during its meeting tomorrow.

According to Baker, the UMKC partnership means more economic development, as well as additional workforce.

"All the professors that come to reside downtown actually make quite a bit of money, and hopefully the pharmacists when they get out will make quite a bit of money," Baker said. "There's a huge shortage of pharmacists in southwest Missouri. The concept is that if a person gets trained here, they'll probably stay here."

He noted MSU and its staff have historically impacted the local economy to the tune of about $1 million a day.

Globally, the 20-year MSU veteran works to recruit students utilizing partnerships in China, and he is pushing this year for students from Vietnam, Brazil, Chile and possibly Russia. MSU inked a deal in November authorizing a Master of Business Administration transfer deal with Santiago, Chile-based University of Andres Bello. Baker said MSU has 1,426 international students in the states, roughly 800 of which are transfer students from China.

Baker said he and other MSU officials look at emerging markets for potential partnerships, places where money is flowing or burgeoning. Through his connections, Baker has worked with the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce in an effort to introduce local and Chinese businesspeople. "The Chinese market is like the Wild West; you can lose everything or you can do very well," Baker said.

When working with businesspeople from outside of the U.S., Baker recommends patience, an open-minded willingness to learn the culture and treating others with respect. "The Golden Rule works in every country I've been to," he said.

Bridging the gap among cultures in Springfield is MSU's downtown Foreign Languages Institute at the Jim D. Morris Center, a partnership between MSU, Drury, Evangel and Southwest Baptist universities and Ozarks Technical Community College that would prepare graduates for an increasingly global workforce. Courses are set to begin in the fall.

“Monroe Project Achieved LEED Certification” (The Monroe) - HDesign Group's Blog

Monroe Project Achieved LEED Certification

December 28, 2012 in Architecture, H news

H Design Group is proud to announce that The Monroe, University Housing at Missouri State, has achieved LEED Certification.

The Monroe features such LEED concepts as highly efficient HVAC, lighting, window systems, and sustainable construction materials.  This living/learning facility was built for the United Ministries Group in conjunction with Missouri State University.  Its location within the Missouri State campus allows for a greater/easier/greener connectivity for the facility users to access surrounding public transportation opportunities as well as many public services.

Click here to read H-Design Group’s Blog “Monroe Project Achieved LEED Certification” (The Monroe)

From the Ground Up: The Fremont Retirement Community

1520 E. Bates Ave.

Brittany Meiling, Editorial Intern

Tuesday, November 20, 2012 10:15 AM

Owner/developer: Miller-O’Reilly Co. Inc.
General contractor: Build LLC
Architect: H Design Group LLC
Engineers: Olsson Associates Inc., civil; Wells & Scaletty LLC, structural; Colvin Jones Davis LLC, mechanical, electrical and plumbing
Size: 37,800 square feet
Estimated cost: $5 million
Lender: Empire Bank
Estimated completion date: June
Project description: An expansion of The Fremont Retirement Community comprises two buildings: a 30,500-square-foot assisted living facility and a 7,300-square-foot memory care facility, according to Bryon Oster, project architect with H Design Group LLC. He said the two-story assisted living facility includes 56 beds across 48 single-bedroom and studio apartment units, a commercial kitchen, theater, private dining room, salon and Jacuzzi and workout rooms. The single-story memory care building comprises 16 beds across eight two-bedroom units, a commercial kitchen, sunroom, salon and Jacuzzi room.

“In the Pipeline: Senior Housing Construction Projects” (The Fremont) - Senior Housing News

In the Pipeline: Senior Housing Construction Projects (8/29/2012)

August 29, 2012 by Alyssa Gerace Comments (0)

Construction: In the Process

Fremont Senior Living Breaks Ground on $6 Million Memory Care Building in Mo.

The Fremont Senior Living Campus in Springfield, Mo. is expanding with the addition of a $6 million assisted living and memory care building, bringing the total value of the campus to $14 million. 

Fremont Senior Living will get 56 beds of licensed assisted living and 16 beds of memory care to join its 22 existing villas and 33 apartments. 

The assisted living addition will provide personal care services, full-service, restaurant-style dining, and one-bedroom and studio apartments. On the memory care side, residents will have access to a home-like setting with innovative Alzheimer’s disease and dementia programming. 

With the addition of these buildings, the community will now offer a continuum of long-term care services in one location. The project is expected to be completed by the summer of 2013. 

Miller O’Reilly is the project developer, and Empire Bank is financing the construction. 

“The Fremont has experienced tremendous growth over the past 12 months, which prompted Miller O’Reilly to consider adding assisted living and memory care,” said Stephanie Harris, CEO of Arrow Senior Living Management, operator of the senior living campus. “We are excited to take this next step to offer more services for Springfield’s area seniors.”

Click here to read Senior Housing News: “In the Pipeline: Senior Housing Construction Projects (Fremont Senior Living Breaks Ground on $6 Million Memory Care Building in Mo.)” (The Fremont)

“The Fremont to break ground on expansion” (The Fremont) - Springfield Business Journal

SBJ Staff

Thursday, August 23, 2012 6:00 AM

Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder and officials with The Fremont retirement community have scheduled a groundbreaking ceremony today for a planned expansion of the southeast Springfield campus.

The Fremont, 1520 E. Bates St., plans to add two buildings and 56 assisted-living beds and 16 memory-care beds to the community's existing 22 villas and 33 apartments, according to a news release.

The assisted living addition would add one-bedroom and studio apartments, as well as provide personal care services and restaurant-style dining. The memory care cottage would offer a home setting for seniors with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. The new buildings, which are being designed by H Design Group LLC and constructed by Build LLC, are expected to open in summer 2013. According to the release, The Fremont is owned by Miller-O'Reilly Co. Inc. and managed by Arrow Senior Living Management, a St. Louis-based senior living management company.

"The addition of senior health care services enables Miller-O'Reilly to meet a full spectrum of housing needs for Springfield from student housing to senior housing," said Pat O'Reilly, Miller-O'Reilly partner with Matt Miller, in the release. "It was our original vision to provide a healthy community for seniors to thrive. The Fremont expansion truly gives seniors more programs to meet their changing needs and fulfills our vision."

Kinder and other officials will meet at The Fremont at 4 p.m.

“It is such an honor to have the state’s leading advocate for seniors recognizing the efforts of Miller-O’Reilly,” said Stephanie Harris, CEO of Arrow Senior Living Management, in the release, pointing to Kinder. “The Fremont has experienced tremendous growth during the past 12 months, which prompted Miller-O’Reilly to consider adding assisted living and memory care."

Click here to read Springfield Business Journal: “The Fremont to break ground on expansion” (The Fremont)