Ashby Ponds

We have been here in Ashby Ponds for two months now. The biggest reason why we have chosen this place is that it's close to our son, his wife and our grandchildren. It also has the most amenities of all the places we looked at. It has swimming pools, ponds, gyms, you get one meal a day, lots of activities, and all kinds of clubs and things like that. They have an exercise room, water aerobics, and exercises that you can do both on the property and in the water. They have crafting ideas, ceramics, and just every kind of crafty thing you'd want to do. There are lots of options. The staff is extremely friendly and extremely attentive to the needs of the community. There are seven restaurants open in this facility. All the foods and all the restaurants are good. There are some glitches in some of the equipment that they're working with. They're still working on getting the pool heating system repaired, and that was one of the draws. As for activities, they are always doing something. There are hundreds of things to do around here. As for value for money, this is not for everybody, but I would give it a 5. You come in with a huge amount and then you pay a monthly rent, and then on top of that, when you pass or when you move out, you get 90% of that big chunk back. So it's a little different than the other places we looked at.

We did a tour of Ashby Ponds. That just was too big, and it's farther away than we want to be. I'd rather be in a few miles of, you know, our friends and neighbors and people that we know that'll probably be useful for a while anyway. It was a very nice physical tour of the buildings. There were two or three of the different styles and sizes of apartments. There was a group meeting, I guess there are about 40 or 50 of us and each couple person was assigned a resident to be their liaison, which was kind of a neat thing. I mean, you had a point of contact who was not somebody who was a marketing person, but somebody who lived there. You could feel like you get on more honest answers. I thought that was a nice touch. They had the speakers, a couple of the employees, and then one of the residents got up and talked about various different activities and whatnot. I thought it was well organized. It was the first onsite tour after some level of Covid restrictions had been lifted. So, you park, then they had a bus that took you to the meeting building. It's all very well organized and it was all very nice. The place is huge, it was 1500 people or so. It was probably more overwhelming than we were ready for. You kind of get lost in that, so maybe something a little bit smaller would be good. That was the value of that. It was a good data point, we decided we didn't want something that was a thousand plus people; so that was good. There are much smaller ones around here and it's consistent. Those two things kind of work together. It had a full suite of amenities or activity areas from, a woodworking shop to kind of like those neighborhood bars. They had groups of guys get together and organize, routine golf outings. It had on-site amenities, physical amenities. Plus, it had a fairly very active group of residents who then kind of organized other activities that may have very well been off-site like the golfing was at local golf courses. So, I thought it is very well established in terms of its activities and what's going on. What's nice about it is that they have many buildings, but each set of buildings sort of has its own little social area. It has a restaurant or two, and maybe a bar is not the right word, but an area for cocktails before dinner. The dinners are sort of structured so that you can get to meet people. There is this kind of a social aspect to how things are done so that you kind of inadvertently, you don't get forced to, but you get to meet your neighbors; I think that's important. It had a hair salon. It had, at least, two pools, underground parking for one car per apartment, and then surface parking for an additional vehicle. It had lots of walking trails, which was a big deal and outdoor grill areas. If you went to a resort, you had a lot of that kind of amenities. They're a very great facility, very well organized, nicely presented. You couldn't ask for anything more. They give you free lunch, it was excellent. It was a box lunch, that's all they could do back in the COVID days, but it was pretty upscale for me. It was very nice. The staff was very professional. It is truly grand.

The Ashby Ponds community is beautiful. From our initial impression, it's a very nice, well-run facility. The staff who gave the tour was very knowledgeable, she knew the property and she said this is the second one of these properties she's worked at. And in fact, her in-laws lived there, so she had a personal connection with it too. The downside to this one is it's a very large community, it has multi buildings, and my mother is not very mobile. It's one of those that's continuing care, so they've got the big upfront fee you'd have to deposit, and you'd have to make up your mind on that. That's a place where I could find a lot of stuff to do. They had it all. They have a fabulous indoor pool, they have several amenities like that. The residents were very active. We saw residents building military facilities, playing dominoes, you name it and they have it. It's close to a hospital, it's close to a mall and close to restaurants.

I visited Ashby Ponds. I didn't like it. They charge a huge entrance fee to get into it. The rooms were really small, but the facility itself was great. It looked big and spacious and all of that, until you get to the rooms, which were so small. The living room had even a weird shape, and it's very, very narrow. They've got an amphitheater, a big church place in there, and they've got a lot of bells and whistles in the actual facility itself. It's just the rooms were very, very small. The staff was very knowledgeable, helpful and seemed nice.

I live in Ashby Ponds. There are 1,500 residents here, that's how large it is. We have all of the amenities that you would want, but right now everything is limited. We don't eat in the dining rooms except by a limited appointment. Most of our meals are by takeout. The exercise rooms and the swimming pool are all by appointment. We're not allowed to have visitors except in our apartments but by a limited number. Everything is pretty much still a very tight quarantine. Fortunately, the health record here has been exceptional. They have independent living, assisted living, and dementia/Alzheimer's. Right now, we're not happy with the way things are, but that's not their fault. The one complaint that everyone seems to be having, and I guess it's because everything has become so routined, is that we like a little more variety in the food menu. However, that is probably due to the circumstances.

My husband and I were invited to lunch and to tour the facility. We listened to the sales people explain what the community has to offer. First of all, it is very expensive and goes to 5-10% every year. They did tell us they have never asked anyone to leave but a few people have run out of money. The unit you pick is based on the entrance fee. We were only interested in something around $400,000. The unit was very small and in need of repair and updating which you can do. You can choose to upgrade appliances, floors, etc. It's a nice idea, not for us.