This week, President and CEO of Nevins & Associates, David Nevins, sat down with Sue Shea, President and CEO of Carsins Run at Eva Mar. They discussed a variety of topics including an update on construction and plans for completion, the impact of COVID-19 and more. Below is a condensed version of their conversation:
David Nevins: Tell us about Carsins Run at Eva Mar, Harford County's first Continuing Care Retirement Community.
Sue Shea: Carsins Run will be the first continuing care retirement community, or life plan community, in Harford County. Not only does Carsins Run offer independent living, we also have assisted living, memory care and comprehensive nursing all on the same campus. Meeting a variety of needs has been our goal from the start, so we’re excited to achieve that.
The Carsins Run campus will have 137 independent living residences, 32 assisted living suites, 12 memory care suites and 12 comprehensive nursing suites. We like to compare Carsins Run to a resort because our community provides independent seniors a vibrant resort-like campus with social activities, walking trails, fine dining, transportation services, security and much more.
We’ve recently added a new residential option to the campus – the Manor Homes at Carsins Run. When designing the new Manor Home apartments, we wanted to offer a neighborhood-feel to the community. These Manor Homes feature a variety of accommodations including garages, elevator access, porches and more. We will have 10-15 of these large apartments per building, and we plan to build three buildings. The Manor Homes will also have open floor plans, large great rooms, kitchen islands, walk in closets and most will be corner apartments to maximize light in the apartment.
DN: How will this community benefit Harford County and its community?
SS: Over the past years, many people in Harford County who were looking for a full-service community had to move outside of the county, or even the state, to meet that need. Carsins Run provides the full continuum of care so that people can stay where they have lived, worked, and played all their lives and enjoy their retirement here.
We’re also adding myriad jobs to the Harford County area. We currently plan on hiring over 100 employees as we get closer to opening the community.
DN: What are the current construction plans and timeline? I understand there is a groundbreaking ceremony coming up in October.
SS: I’m thrilled to announce that there is currently construction going on across the Carsins Run campus. We’re in the process of adding sewer linesthat will serve both Carsins Run and our neighbor, Keystone Custom Homes. In November 2020, we will begin site work for our first Manor Home with construction to follow. Full campus construction of the independent living clubhouse, apartments, comprehensive nursing, memory care, and assisted living residences is planned to start in late 2021. With that being said, we currently plan on opening the campus in the middle of 2023.
We will be hosting a socially-distant groundbreaking ceremony for charter members and those who have been involved with the project up to this point on October 21 on the Carsins Run campus.
DN: Has there been a lot of interest from seniors in this new state-of-the-art retirement community? Are there any specials that you want to share?
SS: We’ve had a lot of interest in our community over the past several months. When COVID-19 hit, we cancelled dozens of events we had planned out of safety concerns for seniors. We did keep our office running with employees working from home and staying in touch with future residents. Come August, people expressed interest in meeting with our sales counselors, so we began hosting small-group luncheons again and opened our office for individual appointments with safety precautions in place. I’m thrilled that people have continued to come to our luncheons and have been reserving apartments.
Right now, we’re allowing future residents to reserve apartments for a $1,000 deposit. This allows them to have more time to get their money and affairs in order and we will continue offering this through the end of the year.
DN: How has the pandemic affected your timeline and how are you engaging with your future residents during this strange time?
SS: In general, as far as our sales efforts go, we feel as though we’ve lost five months due to the pandemic. We have kept in touch with people and have continued to communicate with them as best we could. We were able to host ZOOM meetings with charter members and we also had a ZOOM downsizing event which had a great turnout.
We recently hosted our annual crab feast with safety precautions in place. People were very excited to be out and about, meeting their future neighbors and having socially distant fun. We’re also sending a bi-weekly newsletter to charter members to keep them informed during the pandemic, which they have appreciated.
We’ve invited all our charter members and county and state officials to the groundbreaking ceremony on the 21st. The ceremony will be held outdoors to keep everyone as safe as possible.