Environments for Aging - Summer 2018 - 20

EFA DESIGN CHAMPION

RENEE ANDERSON
President and CEO, Saint John's On the Lake, Milwaukee
certified public accountant by trade, Renee Anderson
took a different turn in 1990 when she joined a large
national senior living provider and later landed at
Saint John's On the Lake in 1996 as director of finance. It
was there that she says she found what had been missing in her career: a connection to the people she serves.
Now president and CEO, she spends her days focused on
strategy and visioning. The 5-acre continuing care retirement
community (CCRC) sits on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan
and comprises 90 independent living (IL) apartments in the
21-story South Tower that opened in 2011 (an expansion she
helped lead), 110 IL apartments in the 10-story Central Tower
built in 1979, and 24 assisted living and 50 skilled nursing suites in a three-story structure also
built in 1979. All three buildings are connected by a first-floor Town Center, home to most of the
CCRC's amenity spaces. Anderson is currently at the helm of a new undertaking: a North Tower
that will be home to 79 IL apartments as well as a reimagined skilled nursing setting. Despite efforts to remodel over time, the current care neighborhoods still have double-loaded corridors and
little access to natural light on the interiors, among other challenges. Anderson is on a mission to
fix that, pushing the limits of traditional design solutions and tasking the project team to innovate
everything from unit layout and room design to furniture and views. And she relied on multiple
focus groups, time and motion studies, mock-ups, and more to make sure it's right.

EFA: Tell us about this new project and what's driving it.
Anderson: Our goal is to recreate skilled nursing in a way that respects resident needs and
wants, incorporates best practices, supports ongoing innovation, and responds to the desire to
provide employees the opportunity to deliver excellence.
We've designed the assisted living and skilled care to be identical, affording maximum flexibility
of license and helping overcome barriers to transfers between levels of care. Residents will enjoy
private rooms ranging in size from 350 to 450 square feet with full bathrooms. Each room has
multiple large windows and plenty of space for personalization.

Resident rooms are positioned around
centralized open common space so that
when residents leave their suites, they see,
hear, and smell familiar things that draw them
out. The living space has natural light from all
directions, an open kitchen where meals are
prepared to order, and a terrace overlooking
Lake Michigan. The caregiving team spent
hours poring over plans and analyzing tasks
to design right-sized, appropriately placed
support and back-of-house space.

Why did you want to take a
fresh look at skilled nursing?
As we age, we lose so much: We retire from
our life's work; we move from our family
home; our spouse, siblings, and friends die.
And when our own health changes, wellmeaning children and medical professionals
trundle us off to a nursing home where regulation, under the guise of safety, dictates what
we can and cannot do any longer. No wonder
nursing homes are recognized as the place
you go to die-who wants to live like that? We
want to create a home where residents with
advanced medical and cognitive needs can
live with dignity, exercising the fullest of their
capabilities.

Why is it important to you to
fight for more appropriate
senior living design?

Rendering of Saint John's On the Lake North Tower (at left), Milwaukee
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EFAmagazine.com * Summer 2018

they're allowed to exercise choice. I feel an
obligation to push toward better solutions
challenging the status quo. I hope demonstrating successful alternatives paves the
way for reforms and helps other providers
make better choices for those they serve.

EPPSTEIN UHEN

Residents of skilled care are our oldest
and frailest, and they deserve the best
design money can buy. Skilled care is much
maligned, generally misunderstood, and,
consequently, seriously overregulated.
We've made it so much more difficult than
it needs to be from both a physical plant
and an operational point of view. As a result,
we're directing our precious resources to
compliance, not care, and replicating bad
design-it's maddening! All older adults
should live in a dignified environment where

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Environments for Aging - Summer 2018

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