Getting older? Need some help? New assisted living facility planned for Lady’s Island

Looking for a new home for your aging parents? You could soon have a new option in northern Beaufort County..

Charlotte, N.C.-based CR Senior Living LLC plans to build a elder-care facility on Lady’s Island that includes an independent living area, an assisted living area, and a memory care wing, company partner Eric Sauers told Beaufort County leaders earlier this week.

The company is currently seeking approval for a small change to the county’s community development code necessary prior to construction of the planned 60,000-square-foot facility.

If ultimately approved, plans for the project call for a capacity of about 90 residents.

“We are very excited about Lady’s Island. We’ve done all of our market research and (the location) fits the bill for what we are trying to accomplish,” Sauers said. “...The need in the community is very strong — the demographic and statistics are telling us that’s the case.”

Other senior living communities are sprouting up close to CR Senior Living’s site on a 9.5-acre plot near the intersection of Lady’s Island Parkway and Meridian Road.

Sprenger Health Care broke ground last year on a new elder-care campus on Richmond Avenue in Port Royal. Meridian Senior Living has facilities going up on Sea Island Parkway.

While county leaders didn’t depute the demand for such facilities, they did express concerns about the potential traffic implications of the proposed CR Senior Living project.

Lady’s Island Drive, which would be home to the communities main entrance, “is a very busy highway,” Beaufort County Councilman York Glover said.

Greg Baisch, a project manager with the engineering firm working with CR Senior Living, told county leaders the traffic generated by the facility would be much less than if the property were developed as a single-family home community.

Sauers agreed, saying the community “will be a very friendly, low impact neighbor.”

Because the many of the future residents would not drive, the additional traffic would be minimal, he said. And because the community would not be home to school-aged children, there would be no extra strain on the Beaufort County School District.

Sauers said the facility would employ about 65 people, and shift changes could be scheduled to keep commuting employees off the roadways during particularly busy times of day.

The Beaufort County Council’s Natural Resources Committee recommended approval earlier this week of the code changes that would allow the project to move forward. The full council will likely take up the issue in the coming weeks.

This story was originally published August 25, 2017 at 2:08 PM with the headline "Getting older? Need some help? New assisted living facility planned for Lady’s Island."