Sunrise is in the news again, closing a Senior Living facility in Philadelphia due to high operating costs and heavy financial losses to the building owner.
Mill Run building to be sold
By GEMA MARIA DUARTE
Bucks County Courier Times
BRISTOL - The Mill Run building is up for sale. Gordon Simmons, executive vice president of RHA/Mill Run Inc., said Thursday afternoon that The Flynn Company, a Philadelphia commercial real estate broker, has been hired to sell the Bristol building that most recently served as a senior independent and assisted living facility.
"We are still waiting," he said.
RHA/Mill Run, based in Atlanta, owns the building and said the decision to close last fall came after losing nearly $8 million in the last eight years. Sunrise Senior Living, based in Virginia, manages the senior living facility at 1201 Wilson Ave.
At the Shorewood Village Board meeting where the Sunrise development was discussed, a local architect noted that, due to the layout of the proposed Sunrise building in Shorewood, it would essentially be a "single use" building. By this she meant that, if the assisted living center were to shut down, there is really no other use for the building because of the way it is built.
The limitation is the very small individual apartments (no kitchen included) and large common areas offered by Sunrise. This format is intended to promote community living in the assisted living environment. This format would likely not be suitable for conversion to standard apartments if Sunrise were to close the facility, given the small apartment sizes. The speaker at the meeting noted this as a "green building" issue, since if the building cannot be reused, it would have to be torn down to make way for something new.
Given today's story out of Philadelphia , this is an issue we should explore closely.
