Covenant Living at the Samarkand

Kathy

We went to Covenant Living at the Samarkand. The grounds were absolutely delightful. You felt like you were living in a park. Things opened up to beautiful landscaping, and the pool was lovely. It had a sense of being quite lively. There was a lot of activity going on outside, and it seemed very friendly and very warm. The staff person who showed us around was a delight. We love the history of the place. It had actually been a hotel at one point, and it had sort of the architectural bones of the old Spanish style hotel. It was easy to get to from the freeway. It's very close to a main street in Santa Barbara, which was nice. We liked it very much except for two things. One is that the units we saw just seemed quite cramped. I realize that in Santa Barbara you do a lot of outdoor living, but the living room/dining area in the unit felt sort of like my grandmother's assisted living. It didn't feel like independent living. It was kind of a downer for me. I'm waiting to see if they had some bigger apartments. As you're wandering around, you don't have the feeling that a religious based organization owns the place. However, all of their vehicles have giant lettering that say Covenant (which on the West Coast sounds very conservative theological), and it's not sort of our direction. It felt a little strange to us. They had a big place for services. One side was sort of the synagogue side; the other side was kind of the nondenominational Christian side. Everything was very definitely resident driven. The staff mentioned, "We're getting a lot of people who want to sew. We're going to have to make some space for the quilters." I love that; that's exactly what you want to hear. The rooms were just too small. They felt cramped, and their kitchens were quite small. Their accommodations were not that good, but the grounds were stunning. I love the park and the way it was designed. I loved the landscape architecture of the place, including the actual architecture of the building and their layout for the residents. If you were single, it might be very different. It was cramped for a couple.

Harold

We went to Samarkand. The staff, the food, and the care for the residents were good. The rooms were real nice. They had all kinds of activities. They had swimming, golf, and tennis, and they take people to concerts. They've got a pretty good program, but it's in a hard to get to type of location. The roads were kind of narrow, so it's a little dangerous getting in and out of that place.

Provider Response

Ruth056408

I really like The Samarkand. They are great and had everything you can think of, including a fitness center and café in addition to the dining room. The units and apartments are beautiful had a patio and balcony. The grounds themselves are just gorgeous. There’s lot of activities and interests groups.

Caring63881650

My experience was very positive. The nice thing about Covenant Retirement Communities is they allow people to stay there for two nights and arrange for visitors to have meals with the residents in their dining rooms. You're allowed to explore the local community, and they had religious activities like bible studies and prayer meetings. The staff was very pleasant and very enjoyable to meet and talk with. The Samarkand was a former hotel, and the rooms were not standard. They were different in shape. They were very nice and varied in size. There were multiple buildings there. The dining room was very nice, and they had three meals a day. They had outings where they take the residents on the bus, and they had various activities on the campus itself. I liked the religious aspect of it. They were very focused on the Christian faith, but they did not discriminate based on faith.

Morengo

This is a high end facility which strives to perform to that expectation. The staff is wonderful taking great care to treat each person as an individual and listen to their needs. They take into account the personality of each resident also. My impression was they try to balance the individual freedom of the residents with their need for safety and security. The food is top notch, with specially hired chefs to keep the people happy. With that many residents, there are often many opinions about simple things like the menu, the facilities, the decor, etcetra. And they strive to keep everyone happy as well as providing healthy food choices. Some of the food seems pretty rich, but there are always healthy alternatives as well. The facilities are very nice with great attention to detail. Flower, plants, and gardens abound both in common areas and around individual buildings. The cost, of course, is a bit high, but its hard to imagine a better run organization, or a nicer place to live. The area provides wonderful weather with great views of surrounding hills and nearby neighborhoods. Its in one of he nicest cities in California, near the beach and every kind of restaurant you can think of.