Emerald Heights

Here at Emerald Heights there's 550 people that live here, and we have four degreed physical fitness people and several acres for a walk through the woods every day. I don't think there can be many facilities that are better when it comes to physical fitness. I was taking 13 classes a week before the corona hit. We have 30 different classes a week that people can choose from and we have four degreed physical fitness people. Besides that we have the trip and event girls who do a great job in putting together trips and events. With the corona it's different. However, they have extra movies on and different activities to keep us busy. Then we have the in-house TV and we have 38 acres here to walk on. This is the CCRC. My husband is in the skilled nursing wing. There's memory care and assisted living too. The staff and residents in that wing are over 300 people. I knew this because they did a corona test and that's how many tests they did in that wing. We have a high morale here. The residents here feel like they are respected by the staff and the staff feels respected by the resident. Our apartment is only 904 sq. ft. but we have two bedrooms, two baths, and a living room and a kitchen. Our fees are not exorbitant like they are in these family homes, the fees are exorbitant; here they are not. I would be very curious if you could find anything that goes near what Emerald Heights has to offer. The food is absolutely exquisite. We have lots and lots of choices that we can make. During this coronavirus, we also have what they call a grab-and-go. It's a refrigerator with a window and then we can choose the food in there if we want. They are already packaged and you can put them in the oven for two to three minutes and then you can get your full meal. You can also choose from the specials or you can choose from the wide variety of other food. They have quite a number of people that work in the dining room and the kitchen, so the restaurant is absolutely exquisite. We all have to eat in our rooms now by ourselves of course. We go and take out. We order our food in the morning. We have, I think, four vans and two buses that takes us to our medical appointments in three different towns around here. The vans would also pick up residents' orders from the department stores in the area, so I just don't know what else more anybody can do for seniors that is not done here. The staff loves us and they come to work for us, they don't come to work for them. Same way with maintenance. We have good maintenance crew and they all want to help us. No matter what the problems, they're out to help us. I don't see where we can find a better place. The food is tasty. We have a sister campus which is about an hour and a half away, the chef here is also in charge of the chef down there. You could not have a better restaurant in my opinion. We have a guardhouse and it's manned all the time, 24/7. We have gates and right now it's manned differently. We only have one way to come in and we drive in, we have to stop at the lobby, go in and have our temperatures taken, and then we can go and park our car. Anybody coming in off campus can't, no visitors are allowed. Visitors come, but they just have to drop off everything at a table we have set up. They drop off what they want to and they drive off. You might think it's expensive, but this area is kind of a high-priced area. There are stories I hear about these family homes. I know somebody that pays $12,500 per month to live in a home. A friend of ours also pays $9,000 a month to live in a home. I think there should be regulations because I think that's just out of bounds to be charging that kind of money. I pay about $6,000 a month. Here, for couples, once you go over at skilled nursing, the only extra charge is for supplies and medicine and the government requires three meals a day, so I pay only about $1,000 more for my husband to be in skilled nursing and this, for me, is reasonable.

Emerald Heights was quite expensive, and there's a very high buy-in to begin with. It was about three years ago that I was there visiting friends. Everything there was quite nice, I did eat in the dining room, the food was very nice, a very nice selection, and everything was very high end, but very expensive. I have friends living there that have a two-bedroom unit classified in independent living, they have to pay upfront in the beginning with no rebate, it's $477,000 just to get in, and for the two of them for the monthly charge it would be in excess of $5,000.

Emerald Height was very nice, big, and had a nice dining room where you could eat at any time. They had a swimming pool with classes, a fitness area with attendants, and a courtyard with a miniature railroad and lots of nice places to sit. The rooms and apartments were very nice and can be remodeled if somebody new moves in. The food was very good. It was well kept up, and the residents were involved in committees that made decisions. However, I don't care for the area since it's very far out, and I'm looking for something closer in.

Emerald Heights's appliances and facilities were topnotch. It was everything that you would expect and a lot more. They were exceptional in all regards from the services that were available to the food, the preparation, the attitude of the place, and recreation facilities. They had a swimming pool, book meetings, social meetings, and exercise meetings. They just had a lot going on there. The food was excellent and good.

I’m going to Emerald Heights. I obviously like it very much. It’s continuing-care -- which is what I’m looking for. It’s gorgeous, very nice, and expensive but I hope it will be worth it.

Emerald Heights was a little bit older, more spread out, and nicely landscaped. The food there was the best of any place I've tried and had lots of choices. They had lots of activities, bus trips, a very nice gym, and pool. They had the place very well maintained. The only drawback I had was the very large buy-in.