Environments for Aging - Fall 2019 - 28

EFAmagazine.com * Fall 2019

in any one place, we wanted a way to increase
that," Zinkand says.
Looking to address these concerns and
set itself up for the future, CC Young brought
D2 Architecture on board for master planning
discussions. Facing a landlocked campus,
which butted up against Dallas' light rail transit
system on one side and an adjacent residential neighborhood on the other, the project
team had few options for expansion. Then,
CC Young's owner suggested consolidating
the licensed care into one complex-to be
called The Vista at CC Young-by expanding
onto a small parcel on a steep hillside slope
on the east side of campus. "We found a way
to make limoncello out of lemons," Warner
says.

Challenges informed design
Turning the hillside into a viable area for a new
senior living community meant D2 had to dig
down 28 feet to install special retaining walls.
This concrete support structure was required
to build a tall building, and it also helped to set
the building into the side of the hill.
D2 used the newly created below-ground
space to create a 65,000-square-foot parking
garage for 100 cars, addressing another longtime issue on the campus. "Stacking parking
underneath the tower was a more efficient use
of a tight site in this corner of the campus,"
Warner says.
When it opens later this year, the nine-story,
326,000-gross-square-foot community will
house 59 assisted living units, 32 assisted

living memory support units, and 129 skilled
nursing units. After residents from existing
residential buildings are transferred to The
Vista, some of the former buildings will be
demolished in Phase 2 of the community's
master plan to make room for a new roundabout and entry garden for the campus.

Going up
Delivering a vertical, high-rise space, D2 and
Faulkner Design Group (Dallas), which came
on board in 2014 to serve as interior designer,
designed each floor to serve a different
population. Additional levels include the main
lobby and entry and a 3,100-square-foot adult
day center on the first floor; a spa, rehab suite,
multipurpose room, and café on the second
floor; and rehab facilities on the eighth floor.
Each residential floor is laid out in an
L-shape comprising two households of 16
units on each side of a communal kitchen and
multipurpose room. To ensure the building
will be flexible for future population changes,
the units on floors four to eight are designed
to the highest licensing standards to flex
between assisted living memory support
and skilled nursing. "In five years, if demand
surges in the memory support market, for
example, CC Young can easily change [a
different apartment's] licensing type with the
state," Warner says.
In addition, once it was decided to build
a high-rise, the building code required more
stringent construction types and systems to
be used, including fire protection, mechani-

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ver its 100-year existence, CC
Young, a continuing care retirement community (CCRC) that
sits on 19.5 acres just five miles
from downtown Dallas, has evolved to include
independent living, assisted living, and
memory care units as well as an adult day
center, rehab center, and other amenities. But
by 2013, the CCRC was facing the need for
updated facilities and more residential units.
"There was a main building with a production
kitchen and offices, and five satellite buildings
that were essentially dorm living for older
people," says Chris Zinkand, vice president
of administration for CC Young (Dallas). "The
buildings were old and there was only so
much updating you could do without completely gutting and renovating."
The current set-up of having licensed care
spread out over several different buildings
was hard on residents when they had to move
from one building to another for care. "The
existing campus design was inefficient, hard
to manage, and residents got confused," says
Grant Warner, principal at D2 Architecture
(Dallas) and principal in charge on the project.
In addition to upgrading its buildings for
current needs, the CCRC also wanted to be
prepared for future changes in care delivery
and evolving resident demand and expectations. Its existing buildings were tied to
specific care levels, such as assisted living
in one building and memory care in another,
without space or flexibility to shift. "If the market changed and we needed higher capacity

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Environments for Aging - Fall 2019

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