About Forefront Living and Presbyterian Village North

Forefront Living owns and operates Presbyterian Village North (“PVN”), a nonprofit, entrance-fee based Continuing Care Retirement Community located in Dallas, Texas. The campus, originally founded in 1980, has grown over time to include 365 residential independent living houses and apartments, 101 assisted living units, 44 memory support suites and a health center comprised of 74 skilled nursing beds.

Forefront Living also owns and operates Faith Presbyterian Hospice and the T. Boone Pickens Hospice and Palliative Care Center, which is currently the largest not-for-profit hospice in Dallas, Texas. Forefront Living will open a brand-new CCRC campus, The Outlook at Windhaven, in Plano, TX in 2024.

Greystone & Presbyterian Village North

In 2016, PVN began to look at adjusting their business mix in response to market and economic trends. They also identified an imbalance in the independent living pricing structure compared to market conditions, specifically between the affordability of the monthly fees compared to entrance fees. Forefront Living’s team engaged Greystone to create a campus master plan and conduct a strategic pricing analysis.

The campus master plan resulted in specific, actionable recommendations to adjust, adapt, and grow in the intermediate term while the strategic pricing analysis resulted in pricing recommendations and contract options which created points of parity and differentiation across each of its product offerings, driving occupancy and revenue improvement in the short term.

Conducting a Strategic Pricing Analysis

To begin the analysis, Greystone conducted a site visit and community tour, where we evaluated apartment styles and configurations, building locations and amenities, recent sales statistics, and current apartment availability. We then analyzed the current pricing structure, including monthly fees and entrance fees, entrance fee refundability, contract provisions, health care benefits, and sales incentives, all of which gave us a comprehensive understanding of the current product and pricing. his coupled with a complete market analysis - including supply and demand analysis with market penetration and absorption rates - allowed Greystone to identify adjustments to the monthly service fee as well as modifications to contract refundability, health care benefits, and other contract provisions. These recommendations, once implemented, allowed Forefront to better align its resident pricing with the Dallas market, broaden its market segment, and capture additional market share. These adjustments also improved occupancy, increased revenues and created a foundation for expansion.

The Campus Master Plan Process

The campus master planning process began with review sessions between Forefront Living, PVN, and Greystone, where we evaluated past experiences, current successes and challenges as well as goals for the future of PVN. Through these sessions, a campus master plan was developed which identified expansion opportunities of PVN’s independent living product, helping shift the business mix from a long-term care focus to a residential one. Like other national and local life plan communities, PVN recently experienced a gradual decline in average length of stay in skilled nursing and volatility in daily census with a decline in private pay. PVN began a process of downsizing their nursing beds while replacing and expanding their existing obsolete independent living apartments. PVN began construction on the independent living expansion, The Hawthorne, at the end of 2020, with residents expected to move in in June 2022.

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