Monday, May 6, 2019

Chelsea Senior Living to close Jenkintown facility, laying off 50


By Natalie Kostelni  – Reporter, Philadelphia Business Journal
May 2, 2019, 2:28pm EDT
Chelsea Senior Living is closing a facility it owns in Jenkintown and plans to sell the property at 440 Old York Road.  
The company will close the facility by June 30, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retaining Act Notice, or WARN, Chelsea filed with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor. It currently has 50 employees.
Built by Sunrise Senior Living in 1989, the 39,422-square-foot complex with 62 units was bought by Chelsea in 2010 as part of an effort to venture into a new market. The Fanwood, N.J., company owns and operates 16 senior living properties between New York and New Jersey. “We thought it would be a jumping point to expand into Pennsylvania,” said Roger Bernier, president and COO of Chelsea. 
The company invested $500,000 in renovations and made other improvements but the occupancy hovered around 80 percent, prompting Chelsea to make a business decision to move on from it, Bernier said. “It’s a very saturated market,” he said.  
There are 37,178 senior housing units in the Philadelphia market and 90 percent of those units are occupied, according to a 2017 report by the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care.   
Chelsea is helping residents find other facilities and will staff the building until everyone is moved out, Bernier said. Once the relocations are completed, the building will be sold either at auction or put up for sale. In talking to other operators, Chelsea determined that there would be potential interest by perspective assisted living companies to renovate the entire building for a new but related use such as a facility that catered just to Alzheimer patients.

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