Community for seniors with dementia to open later this winter

The courtyard

A new home for people with dementia is set to open in Annandale in March 2019.

The Renaissance memory-care community, at 7112 Braddock Road, will have 24 beds for people in the early or mid-stages of Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia and 23 for people in the later stages of the disease.

The Renaissance is flanked by two other senior living communities, Leewood Healthcare Center and Arden Courts of Annandale.

The community will have “a lot of activities. beginning the minute they wake up until 9 at night,” says Executive Director Pamela Phillips, such as crafts, music, visiting entertainers, exercise sessions, dancing, games, pet therapy, and other types of non-drug therapy. Those able to go out will be taken on shopping and sightseeing trips.

Residents’ rooms surround a large, secure courtyard with benches, trails, a water feature, and plants the residents can care for.

A hallway

Meals will be served in a dining room, and there’s a chef, not a cook, and waitstaff, Phillips says. The Renaissance has a hair salon and a kitchenette where residents can cook. Nutritional snacks will be available all day, and there will be book, gardening, and cooking clubs.

The Renaissance will also feature the “simple C project,” says Sales and Marketing Director Sandra Fields. Staff will compile a folder on a tablet for each resident that contains information and pictures from their past lives, including their families, occupations, hobbies, accomplishments, favorite places, and what they enjoyed doing.

So when staff visit clients, they can encourage them to reminisce by showing them pictures and playing recordings of family members’ voices. That can be especially calming during “sundowning” episodes, as dementia patients tend to get agitated as the day winds down. It’s all about “distracting, engaging, and redirecting them,” Fields says.

This will be the theater.

The Renaissance will have a 1950s décor with a color scheme from that era and old pictures of local street scenes and stars of the period. The nurses’ station will be designed like an old-time town clinic, and the movie theater in the common area will replicate the State Theatre in Falls Church.

There will one or two nurses on site 24 hours a day, a doctor on call, and caregivers to help with medication, bathing, and other services.

The rooms in the Harbor section, for people in the early stages of dementia, are $7,999 a month for a 290-square foot studio apartment and $6,999 for a 245-square foot unit with a shared bathroom. The cost for rooms in the Harbor plus section, for people with advanced dementia, are an additional $1,000 a month.

The dining room in a similar memory care facility operated by Legacy Senior Living, the company developing the Renaissance.

Six people have already signed on to live at the Renaissance. The first 15 residents, known as “founders,” pay $300 less per month.

Residents are charged a one-time $3,000 move-in fee ($1,500 for founders).

The Renaissance is operated by Legacy Senior Living, a company that owns 17 independent living, assisted living, and memory care communities in six Southern states.