Imagine a Senior Living community where your parents, even if one now requires advanced care, can continue aging in place in their apartment alongside other older adults. That’s the concept behind Orchard Pointe at Creek Valley, a groundbreaking, care-based housing community for retired adults in Carrollton, TX. Carrollton’s Orchard Pointe at Creek Valley, a unique Senior Living Heritage Community, provides housing for older adults with personalized care services in their own apartments. This pioneering approach allows couples living in Independent Living who may require varying levels of care to stay together in their existing apartments instead of moving to a different level of care in the community.
The key goal has garnered winning results: To create inventive Independent Living inspired by increased longevity and growing needs of the aging population. To achieve this, we used an all-hands-on-deck team of architects, designers, technology and food service and equipment experts for the project. One of the significant projects was to build onsite medical and caregiver suites located on the Independent Living floor. The goal is to solve many of the residents’ challenges under one roof. This unique feature allows the Independent Living apartments to be adapted to Assisted Living.
At a time when there is a rising shortage of affordable housing for older adults, increased social isolation and high caregiver turnover rates, Orchard Pointe at Creek Valley’s housing model is a unique solution for these challenges.
“What makes our brand-new Senior Living community unique is that residents can receive personalized care in their existing apartment,” says Wesley Helms, Executive Director of Orchard Pointe at Creek Valley. “The design team listened and worked very closely with us to envision how we can accomplish this by constructing a caregiver’s room and medical rooms on the Independent Living floor, allowing couples with varying levels of care to stay together in their apartments. The apartments all have their own washer, dryer and kitchens.”
The three-story building, located in suburban Dallas, is designed to encourage residents to socialize. While each of the apartments have a small kitchen, there is a bistro and a large space, restaurant-style dining area where residents can eat together.
Helms applauds the advantages of having older couples continue to live together, versus being separated because of changing care needs and having to move to other levels of care in the community: “It creates closer, more familial relationships and therefore enriches the caregiving experience on both sides. It’s far less disruptive.”