La Via Memory Care, the Alzheimer's facility, will be an 18,400-sf structure with a design that includes a large therapeutic activity area and two exterior courtyards. La Via will cost about $1.6 million. It is scheduled for completion in July.

The La Perla apartments is a 265,000-sf, 153-unit complex intended to house the patients of La Via Memory Care. The three-story complex will cost about $22 million. Units range in size from 823 sf to 1,703 sf. The apartments will deliver in June 2003.

Huntington Beach, CA-based Irvin Pancake is the architect, with Arthur Shuster of St. Paul serving as interior designer. The Weitz Co. of Phoenix has been tapped as the builder.

Clay Wells, Weitz's business development manager, tells GlobeSt.com that this is the firm's first project for at the La Posada campus, owned by La Posada at Park Centre Inc., a single-asset non-profit senior living provider. Des Moines-based Weitz Co. is the largest builder of senior care facilities in the US. The firm also is working on the design of Friendship Village in Tempe and building the 163-Fairwinds Ivy Ranch in Oceanside, CA. Although the senior care market, like all construction markets, is down in the current economy, Wells says the specialty niche is continuing to grow as the baby boomer generation begins to retire.