Where do we go from here?(Special Report--Assisted Living)(marketing plans for assisted living facilities)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Creating the assisted living community of the future often involves borrowing some ideas from success stories of the past. The following vignettes from five assisted living facilities present a brief case history of how each facility prevented or found solutions for a range of problems, from low revenue streams to sagging occupancy rates.

At the core

Garden Spot Village, a retirement community in New Holland, Pa., built three essentials for a successful business: a beautiful campus, artistically designed buildings and great service.

But after the facility opened its expanded assisted living and memory support programs in fall of 2001, it was suddenly struggling with a low census. "[Because of] the lower-than-budgeted occupancy, our costs per resident day were extremely high," Chief Executive Officer Stephen Lindsey said.

Rather than panic or simply ignore the problem and hope the situation would resolve itself, Garden Spot went back to the drawing board to create a new market study and two-year marketing strategy. According to Lindsey, the facility …