n Development The Adaptive Reuse Gamble Despite the significant challenges of converting old buildings into seniors housing, developers roll the dice and build a more inviting product. By Jeff Shaw Because of the special needs of the sector, seniors housing developers nearly always say they prefer ground-up development rather than redevelopment projects. It allows them to build a property exactly how they want in order to meet the needs of modern seniors. But sometimes an opportunity presents itself to convert an old building into something new, often restoring a historic property to new glory. Because of the variety of original uses, each project becomes unique. In the Boston suburb of Brookline, Welltower recently paid $34 million for the entire campus of Newbury College, which held its last classes in 2019. Welltower, which plans to turn the 7.8-acre property into a seniors housing community, declined to comment on specifics of the plan. The Masonic Hall and Asylum Fund took a similar approach in the New York City suburbs by acquiring the former campus of College of New Rochelle, located just north of The Bronx, for $32 million. The buyer, which has remained silent on the details, is a nonprofit seniors hous-ing operator, leading many observers to specu-late about the possibility of a seniors housing conversion. Alliant Capital is turning a 1915-vintage bak-ery in Terre-Haute, Indiana, into an affordable seniors housing property near Indiana State University. In Traverse City, Michigan, Cypress Partners is converting part of a former mental hospital built in 1885 into 110 units of indepen-dent living and assisted living. The community room, above, and check-in area, below, of the former St. Charles Hospital in Aurora, Illinois, show off the distinctive Art Deco personality of the property. Evergreen repurposed the building, originally built in 1932, into an affordable seniors housing community. Irreplaceable real estate One of the reasons some developers opt for these unique adaptive reuse projects is that the buildings themselves are impossible to replace. Watermark Retirement Communities cur-rently has two of these types of projects under development: • In Los Angeles, the company is convert-ing a 14-story former UCLA dormitory into independent living apartments called The Watermark at Westwood Village. The project is scheduled to open in late summer this year. • In Brooklyn, the company is repurposing a historic hotel — later used as the headquarters and dormitory for a religious order — and cre-ating 275 units of independent living, assisted living and memory care. The property is also scheduled to open later this summer. Both are urban infill sites in walkable loca-tions surrounded by countless businesses and amenities. The two projects share another advantage: The urban buildings were grandfathered in before height restrictions went into effect. So, if either of the existing buildings were ever to be knocked down, they’d have to be replaced by Seniors Housing Business n 14 www.seniorshousingbusiness.com July 2020