Developers to break ground Jan. 31 on Ashgrove Woods senior community

A new senior-living community in northern Jessamine County will aim to provide care for the parents of baby boomers while giving the large aging generation a chance to stay close to family.

 Officials will break ground on the $30 million Ashgrove Woods development off Brannon Road on Tuesday, Jan. 31. It is expected to bring hundreds of temporary jobs during construction and around 150 permanent full-time jobs.

The project is planned to include a 72-unit assisted-living facility, including 36 units dedicated to memory care, as well as 72 individual homes and townhomes. Louisville-based Christian Care Communities will operate the community; The Joseph Group from Lexington is the developer.

“It will help senior adults in different stages of their lives in different needs,” said Charbel Joseph, founder of The Joseph Group. “You’ve got the independent living, which are the homes and townhomes, and if you were to need a little bit more care and assistance, you would move into the assisted living.”

Keith Knapp, president and CEO of Christian Care Communities, said the location of the development in a relatively busy area challenges the “traditional wisdom” of retirement as a getaway and answers current seniors’ desire to be involved in the community.

“The location of this particular development is very consistent with that thinking in that you’re near services, you’re near shopping and entertainment,” Knapp said. “You’re an integral part of the community, not an appendage.”

Completion of the assisted-living facility, which takes up 4.3 acres of the 20-acre project, is expected in spring 2013. The first individual homes will be completed this summer, and three lots have already been reserved. Joseph said the independent-living units were “maintenance-free.”

“We do everything from mow the yards to clean the gutters — everything,” he said.

The 55-and-over community is also planned to include a clubhouse, banquet hall, chapel, community garden and park.

Ashgrove Woods was slated to be just an assisted-living complex in the early planning stages, but as the developers gathered more information, they found there would likely be a large population of independent seniors wanting to stay close to their older parents.

“The reason that the project expanded was that we had a lot of adult children, the adult baby-boomer children, that are very healthy,” Joseph said. “They do not need the assisted living, but their parents do, so they want to have a place that they can live next door to their mom and dad while at the same time, they’re not living under the same roof ... and so they stay closer together, even though they’re growing older.”

Demographic data from the 2010 Census played a big role in showing Knapp the need for a senior-living community in the area.

“That’s a corridor that appears to have a growing need for this type of option for families, not just for elders but for their adult children who think about having someone there to live close to them,” he said.

The homes and townhomes will be built on an as-needed basis, Joseph said, and will average between $200,000 and $250,000 in cost. Some in a custom-built estate section could have higher price tags.

Joseph said temporary professional and construction jobs including contractors, insurance agents, attorneys and real-estate agents will number about 300 while the project also creates a large number of permanent jobs.

“By the time you factor in the management company for the entire development as well as all the people that Christian Care is going to employ, you’re looking at anywhere around 140-150 people,” he said.

The Ashgrove Woods site is located behind Brannon Crossing, north of East Brannon Road and east of Grey Oak Lane.