Frogmore has teamed up with Innovative Aged Care to assemble a portfolio of four sites in central London for high-end dementia care schemes.
The sites are all in prime locations: King’s Road, Chelsea; Abbey Road, St John’s Wood; Kensington Square, Kensington; and Princes Square, Bayswater.
Frogmore is investing about £50m of equity from its Frogmore Real Estate Partners III to acquire the sites and redevelop them into high-end dementia care homes, providing a total of 110 beds.
Last week, it completed the acquisition of the fourth site in Princes Square, which is currently used for serviced apartments and will be redeveloped once planning permission is in place.
The Abbey Road and Kensington Square sites, a derelict care home and office building respectively, will also be redeveloped once planning permission has been secured.
The King’s Road property was acquired as a leasehold by Innovative Aged Care and has been up and running as a dementia care facility since 2016.
Frogmore chief executive Jo Allen said the success of the facility had helped persuade the company to invest. “It’s a really undersupplied market,” she said. “The Chelsea facility is fully let with a waiting list so we know there is unmet demand.”
Innovative Aged Care was founded by Laurence Geller, a hotelier who set up Classic Residence by Hyatt – North America’s first branded senior-living organisation. He said his vision was for Innovative Aged Care’s homes to be “the Four Seasons of dementia care”.
As well as offering luxury facilities such as a cinema and library room, a spa and a private dining room, the homes will have significantly more staff per resident than is the norm in the industry.
“We want to set standards,” said Geller, who donated £1m last year to establish the Institute of Dementia Care at the University of West London’s College of Nursing, Midwifery and Healthcare.
He said he had focused on London initially because of the lack of supply in the capital but had plans to open new homes in Manchester and Edinburgh as well.
The homes will operate under the brand ‘Loveday’ and the motto ‘Every day lived well’.
Source: Property Week – Thu 7 March 2019