Communities

Cypress Cove Selected as First Senior Community for New Post-Occupancy Evaluation Program

January 9, 2018

GRANDVILLE, MI–The Cottage at Cypress Cove, the newly constructed assisted living memory care residence on the Fort Myers, FL, continuing care retirement community of Cypress Cove at HealthPark Florida, has been selected to serve as the first U.S. site for a new Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE).

Evaluation of The Cottage, part of any ongoing research program to improve senior living design, will assist in identifying which design aspects of Cypress Cove’s four-household memory care facility delivers the best resident outcomes and what new insights can be gleaned from areas that need improvement.

The POE project is being led by the Society for the Advancement of Gerontological Environments (SAGE) and funded by J+J Flooring Group, a major provider of flooring products for the senior living industry. Onsite evaluation of Cypress Cove will begin in late January of 2018.

“We are delighted to be selected as the first POE site,” says Cypress Cove Executive Director Michele Wasserlauf. “Since opening, The Cottage has received rave reviews for its home-like environment. The households’ design, purposely built for residents with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, has allowed our staff to provide specialized person-centered care to those living at the 44-apartment facility.”

“We are thrilled with an opportunity to support the evaluation for an industry that seeks even better approaches to serving those who suffer from loss of memory,” she adds. Selecting the POE site for the evaluation involved careful consideration of both logistical factors as well as content-quality factors.

Detailed descriptions of project goals and objectives will be cross referenced with the SAGE Principles and used as the basis for evaluation to document design outcomes and user experiences. What is learned from the POE can be used to inform future design and set directions for future research in environments for older adults. POEs are used to improve the ways that buildings are designed and support productivity and well-being. POEs have been more commonplace in offices, schools and universities, hotels and hospitals.

J+J Flooring Group and SAGE have formed a partnership to establish the 2018 SAGE POE. The multistep, multi-year program is the first of its kind within the combined flooring and senior lifestyle spaces. The project will provide a sustainable platform to conduct ongoing post-occupancy evaluations (POEs) of physical environments for older adults which involve collaboration among numerous stakeholders.

“Over the years, SAGE has led a number of post-occupancy efforts.” said SAGE President Mitch Elliott, AIA. “The sponsorship of J+J Flooring Group will allow the POE team to dig deeper into exploring the outcomes at Cypress Cove.”

J+J Flooring Group will provide funding for resources and administrative support for the SAGE POE. SAGE will work with J+J Flooring Group to leverage the company’s experts and relationships in the senior living space during the development, implementation, presentation and publication of the POE.

Additionally, J+J will participate in all phases of the partnership and the POE process. The partnership will enable SAGE to build a robust library of POEs, which is a significant first step to fortifying current and future POE tools for collecting usable data on evidence-based design outcomes.

“We believe Cypress Cove is the ideal selection for this SAGE POE project. It’s a top-tier senior community that has a vision for continuous improvement in memory care,” said Keith Gray, director of applied research for J+J Flooring Group. “Their Cottage at Cypress Cove neighborhoods feature some superb and innovative design characteristics. It will be very interesting to see how the POE yields even further refinements in that built environment.”

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