Holistic senior care coming to Maryland Heights
Meditation. Massage. Yoga. Weight loss. Those aren’t traditional treatments that come to mind when thinking of senior care, but the owners of the planned Arbor Crest senior living project don’t want it to be ordinary.
Owned by AnthemUSA, in partnership with Crescent Care LLC, Arbor Crest is planned as a 264-bed facility to be built on Ross Road in Maryland Heights. AnthemUSA is a St. Louis-based organization aimed at helping veterans re-acclimate after returning home from deployment. This is the company’s first senior care center. Crescent Care LLC is owned by Ali Chaudhry, a Pakistani immigrant and petroleum and mechanical engineer who also operates group home Sabbath Manor in Normandy, a 64-bed residential care facility.
The $18 million combination skilled nursing and assisted living center will be built in three phases. Phase one, which is expected to be complete by this fall, will include 114 beds. The rest of the 264 beds will be built in phases two/three.
A Certificate of Need (CON) was approved for the project about seven years ago by the Missouri Health Facilities Review Committee.
AnthemUSA officials said in a statement that the planned facility will place special emphasis on “traditional Ayurvedic medicine,” which originated in India more than 3,000 years ago and promotes the use of herbal compounds, special diets and other health practices.
“While many within our international community already prescribe to Ayurvedic medical care, there is nothing targeted to seniors,” said Kendall Brune, partner at AnthemUSA, who added that the facility also will offer memory care and residential veteran care services.
PFAFF Partnership Inc. of Ballwin is the architect/designer for the project. HBD Construction is the general contractor.
“Each floor of the two-story project will hold 60 skilled nursing beds,” said John Pfaff, president of PFAFF Partnership Inc. “State regulations require that no more than 60 beds be on any one wing of a skilled nursing facility.”
AnthemUSA also operates AnthemHealth, an apartment complex with special programs for veterans located in University City.
Arbor Crest brings the total dollar value of assisted living projects in greater St. Louis this year to at least $82 million. It joins more than $480 million in projects on the books over the past five years, according to Business Journal research.
Despite that, AnthemUSA is a newcomer to the St. Louis senior care community and will have operations competing with those owned by local industry heavyweights Delmar Gardens, The Grove Assisted Living, Lutheran Senior Care, Provision Living and Spectrum Retirement Communities, among others.
