From Survive to Thrive
Retirement communities innovate to meet the challenges of COVID-19 by Connie McDougall
In February 2020, Stuart Brown was out for a run when he heard the news about a deadly COVID-19 outbreak that was sweeping through a nursing home in Kirkland, Wash. It was a terrifying prospect for this chief executive officer of the family-owned business Village Concepts retirement communities. “We immediately went through all of our records to see if there were any connections to that facility,” Brown says. There weren’t any but in an instant, life as he knew it had changed.
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3rd Act magazine | winter 2021/22
“Everyone was scared,” he recalls. “Residents were struggling with all the restrictions and staff had to go to work, taking care of people, not knowing if they’d be exposed. It took a lot of courage to do that every day.” Ryan Miller remembers having a bad feeling early on about what was coming. As the executive director of Skyline, a Seattle high-rise that offers independent- and assisted-living condominiums, he thought, this one was different. “We’ve had flu. We’ve had norovirus. But I had a hunch about this, and I was uncomfortable having the dining room open and group activities. When we did shut everything down, my staff was ready.” Up north in Lynnwood at the Fairwinds-Brighton Court senior living community, General Manager Jackie Requa-Hall was stunned by the pivot required. “Everything came to a halt. Somehow, we had to find ways to get meals delivered, have garbage picked up and fight isolation. Jobs changed overnight,” says Requa-Hall. “It was all-hands-on-deck, from sanitizing doorknobs to delivering mail. It was a huge change for everyone.”
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