INTRODUCTION

We learned of the Tragedy on July 29, 2022. Colonial residents were called to a meeting in our dining room and were told the Colonial Building was being sold to Blake Hospital and we would have to give up our apartments. We could move to either the Lexington, Concord, or Villas, or we could leave Freedom Village.

Some cried. Some cursed. Some just sat there stunned. One minute we were living in our “Home for Life” and the next minute that home was being taken away. We couldn't believe this was happening at Freedom Village, a place we had carefully chosen for spending the last phase of our lives. We had no idea what lay in front of us.

There were 41 families in the Colonial when we were notified, but just 30 of them actually relocated within FVB Independent Living. Of the others, some passed away, some moved to the Health Center, and some left Freedom Village.

PEAK/LCS have reduced their operating costs by consolidating Independent Living residents from three buildings to two. This increased the Independent Living census to about 88%, which was their goal. LCS claims this has been a good thing for Freedom Village and that the money from the building sale has funded the Landings modernization.

Here is the cast of characters.

HealthPeak (or PEAK) is the owner of Freedom Village Bradenton. They are a fourteen billion dollar ($14,000,000,000) REIT, headquartered in Denver. Their holdings are health related properties and include the thirteen CCRCs managed by Life Care Services.

Life Care Services (LCS) manages FVB, along with some other PEAK communities. The LCS people in this story are: Sherry Robinson, Vice President in charge of FVB; Scott McAlister, Executive Director of FVB; Jeni Tomason, Director of Resident Services.

The forty-one Colonial families.

THE STORY

Once upon a time in Freedom Village there were three Independent Living buildings; the Lexington (with 208 apartments), the Concord (177 apartments), the Colonial (77 apartments) plus 32 Villas.  Back then PEAK was a minority owner with 49%; Brookdale owned 51% and managed the community.  Also back then, the property wasn't doing so great financially because the three buildings were only about 74% occupied. For years the Brookdale management team had to look at only 57 occupied Colonial apartments while there were more than 100 vacant apartments in the Lexington and Concord. You can see for yourself what they couldn't have missed.  If those 57 families moved to the two larger buildings they could sell the Colonial building and increase the census to 88%. But throughout their ownership Brookdale never acted on this idea.

Five years ago the situation changed when PEAK bought Freedom Village in a rather peculiar deal.
In November 2019 PEAK announced they had bought out the controlling interest in twelve CCRCs which had been 51% Brookdale. That deal also included "transitioning" the managers of those CCRCs, (Sherry, her bosses, and her team), from Brookdale to Life Care Services so they could continue managing the communities for PEAK.  BUT, there were three other properties in the Brookdale group, one of which was Freedom Village of Bradenton. PEAK did not buy FVB because they didn't think it would make a profit for them. Freedom Village was left behind, still 51% Brookdale - 49% PEAK, and up for sale.
 
The new LCS team very much wanted to continue managing Freedom Village so they worked to convince executives at PEAK to buy FVB also. Two months later there was an announcement; PEAK had reconsidered their decision and were now going to buy FVB.  PEAK had been convinced by LCS to make the purchase. Soon after the purchase a strategy session was held to discuss ways to make FVB more profitable. At this meeting the idea of eliminating the Colonial building was discussed. I believe the strategic plan that emerged included these two items - eliminate the Colonial Building and renovate the Landings. These are the two major things that have happened so far in PEAK's ownership, and Scott often links them together, saying that it was the sale of the Colonial that has allowed FVB to improve the Landings.

LCS moved slowly at first and let attrition do the work for them.  When Colonial residents moved to the Health Center or passed away the empty apartments were seldom filled. Sales in the Lexington and Concord were pushed while the Colonial population declined.  I don't know why they adopted this method, but I'd like to give them a humanitarian motive, to reduce the number of residents affected when the building was eventually sold. The Colonial census began dropping but it wasn't noticed immediately since this was around the onset of the COVID epidemic and sales were down throughout the community. As time passed it became apparent that the Colonial occupancy was shrinking as almost no vacancies were being filled with new buy-ins. By spring of 2022 the census of the Colonial had fallen to 54% (a reduction of 15 families) while the rest of Independent Living was back up to 74%. We Colonial residents were very aware that this shift in population was happening, that we were not getting many new neighbors, but we didn't know why. 

Two things occurred about then that suggest the time for the Colonial to be closed might be approaching. In the March 25, 2022 Listen Group Scott made this statement, somewhat out of the blue: "Our goal is 88% occupancy to stabilize this community, and the goal is December 2023." We had been hearing "88%" since PEAK's ownership began, but this was the first we had heard of a time frame. ("stabilize this community" is just corporate-speak for "show a profit").

88% occupancy of the existing three buildings would have meant 435 occupied residences, and Marketing would have had to sell 85 contracts over and above what was being budgeted. This would have been impossible for them to achieve. But the strategic plan had a different way to reach 88%. By removing the Colonial building's 77 apartments the total number of residences would be much lower. If the Colonial residents could be moved into this smaller base the result would have been 88%. (Not a coincidence - this is where the 88% goal came from in the first place). Scott's statement about the goal suggests that the plan was to have the Colonial closed by December 2023. 

At about this same time, in March of 2022, there was a rumor that the Colonial Building was going to be closed. This rumor was the first public mention of the idea. The origin of the rumor was probably a leak from someone in LCS, but may have been just a rumor springing up because of the Colonial's shrinking occupancy. Scott talked about this rumor in the April 8, 2022, Listen Group. He said that there were plans on the 'heavenly' drawing board for capital improvements to the Colonial building. Specifically, the plans included “a satellite café, a mini movie theater (25 or 30 reclining theater-type chairs), a satellite fitness center, and even a skywalk from the Colonial building over the parking lot to the Landings.” This is a very strange statement. I can't even imagine how much this Skywalk might cost - a 500 foot long walkway, 30 feet above grade, and designed for Senior citizens to push their walkers and ride their scooters safely to the Landings! I do not believe there was an actual plan to do these projects; that they were brought up to deflect residents from talking about the Colonial closing until LCS was ready to announce it. Within a few months the Colonial building closure was announced, just as the rumor said it would be.

On May 13, 2022, an executive of Blake Hospital came to our Listen Group as a guest speaker. Scott told us later that while the Blake guy was here he asked about the possibility of Blake Hospital renting some of Freedom Village’s empty apartments for various visiting doctors/nurses or other personnel. Scott referred the question to Sherry, who sent it on to PEAK. At that level the conversation evolved into the possibility of Blake purchasing the Colonial Building. This possibility created an opportunity for PEAK/LCS that they couldn't resist; the chance to sell the building sooner than they had planned and with less effort on their part. This would have been a good time to explain their relocation plan to the residents and at the same time tell us that negotiations were underway for the sale of the Colonial building to Blake.

Instead they took this approach - they told us that Blake had made an offer to buy the Colonial building, that PEAK had accepted the offer, and therefore the residents would have to be relocated.  It was presented to us as if the relocation idea started as a result of PEAK accepting the offer from Blake. 

***
Three weeks after they told us about the move, FVB sent a notification to the OIR about the upcoming resident relocations. This letter gave a somewhat different description of the situation.  

"FVBR is in negotiations to sell one of the buildings on its campus (the “Colonial building”)."
"The Colonial building was selected to be sold as part of the strategic plan for the community
because (1) it was the smallest building on the campus; (2) the occupancy rate is 54%; (3) it has a
detached location and separate entrance; and (4) more difficult access to the rest of the community."

I have assumed this official notification contained the correct description of the situation.
***

Sherry came to Freedom Village on Wednesday July 27 and she and Scott spent Wednesday and Thursday planning the announcement to the residents. On Friday they held a meeting to give us the news.
The first thing we were told was that PEAK had not been looking for a buyer for the Colonial building, but that Blake had made an offer that was so good PEAK had accepted the offer. The expression used in the official letter was "the impending sale of the Colonial". (Three months later it turned out that Blake would NOT buy the building.) 

During the meeting the apartment transfer package was explained to the residents.
1 – Residents would be moved to an apartment that best matched their current situation.
2 – All upgrades in their existing Colonial apartment would would be transferred to their new apartment.
3 – An additional $8000 in upgrades for the new apartment.
4 – Freedom Village would take care of the move including the packing/unpacking.
5 – Resident’s monthly fee waived for the month in which they move.

Each family received a letter which summarized the meeting and which also identified a proposed apartment for each family.

The next day the process of matching family to apartment began. There were 41 Colonial families to be relocated, and although there were about 100 empty apartments in the Lexington and Concord they were mostly the wrong kind. Too many small ones, not enough large ones. The Colonial apartments were newer and larger than their counterparts in the Lexington and Concord. For example; 17 of the 41 Colonial families were living in apartments larger than 1400 sq ft, but there was only ONE available apartment in the other buildings that was this big. To avoid forcing a bunch of families to "downsize", LCS planned to start combining 1BR apartments to make larger ones. Even then there would not be enough “large” apartments available. So they started with a near impossible situation and tried to make the best of it.

It would have been easiest on the residents if LCS had described the situation right up front, then told us how they planned to approach it. If they had involved the residents early they could have avoided a lot of bad feelings. But they got off to a poor start by using a procedure that upset many residents and caused problems for Scott and Jeni - an apartment was pre-selected by LCS to offer to each family. This made us feel like we were being manipulated - at 9 am they told us we had to leave our homes, then at 10 they said "and here is where we want to put you".  To make matters worse, the empty apartments were a wide range of quality. A few of them were quite nice, mainly recent move-outs which Marketing had not yet sold. But many more were not so nice, they were empty because Marketing hadn't been able to sell them and many had been neglected for years. Some were being used to store maintenance equipment and supplies, others to store used kitchen applicances or bathroom fixtures. This is why the "pre-selection" idea was so bad - LCS picked which families were offered nice apartments and which families were offered the not-so-nice ones. This was unfortunate because the families who received poor offers were upset and suspected there was favoritism involved. The families with "good" offers, (size increases, nice lanai views, close to elevator), accepted their offers immediately, or at least pretty early. Those with "bad" offers, (downsizing, bad views, noisy generators, neglect), rejected them, with the hope that somehow something better would become available. Scott insisted that there was no special treatment involved, but since we never received an explanation of how the apartment assignments were made the suspicion lingered.

After the first few weeks, about 16 families had chosen an apartment and the hard work began. With the early-acceptance residents out of the way, Scott and Jeni were working mostly with the families who still needed to find an apartment in which they could spend the rest of their lives. This had become much more difficult because the left over apartments were just the same ones that nobody wanted to live in. So the work by Scott and Jeni involved two things: offering the rejects to other families in hopes of finding someone who might take them, and waiting for more apartments to become available because of deaths, moves to Assisted Living, or move-outs. The sale of 2-BR apartments to new prospects had been put on hold to improve the chances of getting a Colonial match, but there weren't enough becoming empty to give much help. 
During this early period of trying to find an apartment most residents remained upbeat. About half had already agreed on their new apartment so they were not too stressed out. The other half were still hopeful that something acceptable would be found for them. Scott and Jeni were also very encouraging during this time; they kept reminding us that there were apartments becoming available each quarter and that we Colonials would have first choice. Here is a quote from an early email Scott sent to the Colonial residents reassuring those who had not yet found an apartment:

“As I have said numerous times, the process really will not start until after the sale is final. Obviously, we need to get a head start, but I truly want every resident to take their time in selecting their next home. If you have any doubts after the selection, Jeni and I still want to work with you and see what we can do for you. The apartments will be renovated based on when each and every one of you are ready to make a very personal decision.”

That was the most welcome statement we got during the entire tragedy. Believing that the management cared and wanted us to have a happy ending meant a lot. It was reassuring to know that LCS saw things happening in an orderly manner - and that we at least had the time until the contract was signed to keep hoping to find an apartment we wanted. Remember, at this time we believed the building was being sold to Blake, that they were just working out the details. We were actually glad the details were taking awhile because that gave us more time to find an apartment. 

* * *
The statement may have been true at the time, Scott seemed to believe it, but it didn't turn out that way. The process started. the process ended, the residents were all moved, and the sale still hadn't happened. It felt to us like we had all been moved for no reason.
* * *

Everything changed for the worse on November 10, 2022. Scott called a Colonial meeting where he told us that the sale to Blake was off. Blake was NOT buying the Colonial and he did not know the reason. For a few seconds we were all ready to start cheering; but he continued by telling us that nothing would change, because there just happened to be a second buyer waiting on the sidelines, and the process would continue with this new buyer. Also, the identity of this new buyer was unknown to LCS. We couldn't understand why the process was continuing or where this surprise buyer had come from. The meeting continued for a while with a lot of questions but no more answers. Scott claimed to know nothing more than those two facts – a second buyer had miraculously appeared and the process would keep going just as it had been. 

* * * 
Until this point we had believed that the reason we were being moved was that Blake was buying the Colonial. So when we now learned that Blake was NOT buying the Colonial it seemed to us that the whole thing should just go away. There had been a lot of drama, but nothing had actually happened. No money had been spent on modifying apartments. No residents had been moved. No residents had left FVB in anger. If our being moved was really because of  the “lucky” sale of the Colonial building, this would have been the perfect time to stop it.  At the very least, the resident moves could have been put on hold while PEAK tried to negotiate a sale with the second buyer. But they didn't wait, in fact they started rushing us even more. PEAK and LCS knew they were just continuing to carry out the strategic relocation plan, but the residents had no idea what was going on. This is when we began to lose trust in what we were being told. The sale to Blake had turned out untrue and the new mystery buyer story sounded just plain hokey - if PEAK and Blake really had a deal, how could there have been another buyer waiting? It caused us to become even more frustrated but we could not get any answers so we had no choice but to accept it and move on.
* * *

The process did continue, but it was much different from the way it had been. Scott talked about this in the November 11 Listen Group when he said that the process would have to speed up. He was asked if there was any chance that the Colonial residents might actually keep their apartments; his answer was no, that the process had started and would continue. So by this time LCS knew for sure that the residents were going to be relocated whether the Colonial building was sold or not. 
Scott's and Jeni's approach changed. Although they continued to be sympathetic the message was no longer that we would all work together on the important task of finding each resident a place they could happily call home. The message had become “Sign here right now, whether you like this apartment or not.”  To be specific; Seven days later, on November 17, we all got a letter from Scott to which was attached a ”Unit Transfer Agreement”. This is the document that is required by the OIR for a transfer from one apartment to another at any CCRC in Florida. Scott asked that we all return the signed copy by November 23. Neither the Agreement nor Scott’s cover letter mentioned anything about what was to go along with the transfer and many of the residents were concerned that signing the paper would give LCS and PEAK carte blanche to do anything they felt like doing. The feeling was not helped by the fact that many residents had begun to lose trust in the process. Plus, many were unwilling to sign a document which committed them to an apartment that they didn't want. 

The period just before Christmas 2022 was extremely stressful for those residents who had not yet found an apartment they were willing to call home. The truth is, some of us were panicking. In fact, one couple decided they could no longer deal with the stress and announced they were leaving Freedom Village for good. This was followed by another couple making the same decision less than a month later. It may seem crazy to you that families would choose to walk out and leave their "investment" behind, but it shows how bad things were at this time. In fact there were others also thinking about leaving, including the Bakers. The thing that kept Gwen and me here was our feelings for the Freedom Village people – the residents and the staff.

Although we were not told the reason for the big rush, we learned through another rumor about an April 13 deadline by which the Colonial building had to be empty. I don't know why LCS didn't tell us about the deadline, rather than keeping us in the dark, angry and frustrated. We actually learned about the deadline from the servers in our Dining room. One evening they shared with residents that they had been told the Dining Room would be closed on March 31st to get ready for the April 13 deadline, because the signover was planned for April 14. 

The Colonial Dining room closed on about April 7, and all the residents were moved by April 13, just making the deadline. Scott told us in a later Listen Group that Sherry had requested the deadline be extended until June, but was turned down.

Back to the story. By February 2023 all papers had been signed and apartment updates were going ahead full steam. There was a lot of confusion caused by the April 13 deadline. Mark Cook was originally the sole contractor, but with the new rush CDS was added as a second contractor.  Of course there were some mistakes as you might expect when things are being rushed, but things progressed. Both contractors were usually cooperative, and Scott and Jeni were usually accommodating when problems and requests came up. Many families ended up with an apartment that they either love, like, or at least find tolerable. Some are now in larger apartments than they had at the Colonial, and some of the families who downsized did so by choice. On the other hand, some are in apartments they really didn't want, and some of the people who downsized did so reluctantly.

Then came the next big surprise. April 14 arrived and the new buyer did not sign. Another rumor had circulated that the mystery buyer was a real estate trust who would buy the Colonial and then lease the apartments to Blake. The rumor said that a hundred nurses from the Philippines were going to be housed in the Colonial while they trained/worked at Blake. This was a rumor that LCS seemed to endorse, Scott talked about it as if he believed it would happen. So we all waited for the deal to be made and perhaps bring some sort of closure. Through April, Scott continued to tell us they were still negotiating, but in May, 2023 we were informed that that deal had fallen through. The building remained deserted and unsold for another year and a half. Finally, in December 2024, Scott announced that the Colonial building had been sold. According to several realty company announcements the price was $11,550,000. We now know it will re-open as an apartment complex called "The Blake at Bradenton". 

AFTERTHOUGHTS

It is tragic to be forced to leave your home. Even if it's only an apartment in a Senior Living community. And even if they put you into another apartment that seems as good, or better - because that new apartment is not the one YOU chose to live in, it's just the one you were pushed into. But maybe even more tragic is what happens inside your head - when you realize that you no longer trust the company or the people that you're dealing with, because you know they see you as a pawn for them to move around whenever they feel like it.

It is too bad that LCS and PEAK were not more up-front from the very beginning. In their first two and a half years they were able to reduce the population by 15 families just by attrition. Suppose they had told us in early 2020 that the Colonial building was going to be phased out by December 2023  - imagine what could have been achieved in four years with the residents also working toward that goal. And it would have been far less hurtful to the residents.

By telling us that Blake was buying the Colonial, LCS locked themselves into that story.  Then, when it turned out Blake was NOT going to buy, it put them in a bind, a public relations bind. They didn't want to tell us that we were really being moved because of their strategic plan, neither did they want to admit they were going to move 50 residents without having a sure deal. So they continued it with the second buyer story hoping that would get them through.  When that negotiation also failed they just put the building on the market. But that left them with no good explanation for why they had forced 41 families to move out of their homes 18 months before they sold the building. All because they didn't want to say that they were carrying out their plan to move the residents.

In the March 31, 2023 Listen Group Scott made this statement:
"PEAK did not go out to look for this - regardless of what anyone thinks, I know for a fact, PEAK did not go out to look to sell that building, that offer came to them right, so when they got that offer they took it. And that has allowed this community to fund the Landings renovation project."
Now, at this time Scott still believed that a deal was going to be signed on April 14. It wasn't the deal he was talking about (between PEAK and Blake), but it would have been conclusive nonetheless. Even knowing how things turned out I still think the first part of the statement is true. This is what I believe happened.
Blake wanted to rent apartment space so they approached Scott who sent it up the line. PEAK had no interest in renting out apartments, they just wanted to sell the Colonial building. On the other hand, HCA Healthcare had no interest in owning an apartment building, they just wanted to find a place to house some temporary nurses. The answer was obvious, so very early in their talks they started looking for an intermediary to buy the building from PEAK and then rent the apartments to Blake. This was the deal they expected to happen by April 14 2023 and why they insisted on rushing the resident moves. I admit I can't prove it, but it is a lot more logical than the stuff LCS told us was happening.

I think it is true that Scott and Jeni were kept in the dark about some things. I'm pretty sure that they both believed Blake was definitely going to buy the Colonial, and that they were shocked when they learned in early November that it wouldn't happen. I also think they were both surprised when they learned of the April 13 deadline. Throughout the whole procedure (but particularly after they had to deal with that deadline) Scott and Jeni were on the front lines of what must have seemed like a war at times. Residents were upset and we had no one to take our anger out on except these two. And I have to admit that our words to them were not always respectful. Their job assignment was to get us all relocated, and they worked to do just that. But at the same time I believe their wish was to try to find something that would make us happy. And to make matters more difficult for them they didn't always know what was going on in corporate-world themselves and just weren't able to answer all our questions and concerns.

Sherry and Scott have claimed that moving the Colonial residents was a good thing not only for Freedom Village finances, but also for the residents. Their logic is that making FVB more profitable means PEAK will be less likely to sell the property to some other owner, and that FVB residents are better off with PEAK and LCS than with any other owner/manager. I understand they must say this - they could hardly tell us we might be better of with a different manager than themselves. But with this kind of logic they could claim that anything that makes more money for PEAK must automatically be good for the residents, even something like doubling our monthly fees! It is just their way to try to put a good spin on something they did that perhaps they aren't very proud of. As to whether PEAK really would have sold FVB if they hadn't moved the Colonials, it's a moot point. PEAK bought FVB knowing the moves were going to happen. 

This has been a loss for our community itself. In losing the Colonial we have lost our newest building with the best apartments. We lost what I think was the only fig tree on campus, and also the only weeping bottle-brush tree.  Plus we have lost a beautiful indoor tropical courtyard with the best bunch of Geckos around. Perhaps more problematically, we lost a very pleasant dining room. And now LCS keeps trying to fit the same number of diners into just two dining rooms . . . and not always being succesful at doing so.

And what are we going to gain to replace those losses? More traffic, strangers driving around our campus, perhaps some parking issues, perhaps some security issues, perhaps some noise problems.
We will just have to wait and see but right now there is some nervous concern about who will be coming to the new apartment building. 

REFERENCES

I invite you to take a look at the References. 

The letter each Colonial resident received at our July 29 2022 meeting.

The letter a PEAK lawyer sent to the OIR shortly after our July 29 2022 meeting.

The document Scott asked us to sign right after we were told that Blake was NOT buying the Colonial.

To hear Scott announce the occupancy goal, turn up your volume, click the "88% Goal" button and go to the 27:00 time. When finished, stop the video and click on your browser's Back arrow.

To hear Scott discuss the Colonial rumor and the improvements he was told were on the drawing board, click the Skywalk button and go to the 17:30 time. You will also hear Scott talk about the Landings renovation project - months before the Colonial sale supposedly started. When finished, stop the video and click on your browser's Back arrow.

Scott's words after we found out Blake was not going to buy the Colonial. Click the SpeedUp button and go to the 19:30 time.

To hear Scott talk about Blake making an offer to buy the Colonial click the Offer button and go to the 31:30 time. When finished, stop the video and click on your browser's Back arrow.

See the webpage for the new apartment building, "The Blake".