GRAND RAPIDS, MI—As reported in GlobeSt.com last week, Titan SenQuest Senior Housing, the senior housing company of Los Angeles-based Titan Real Estate Investment Group, Inc., just bought Sentinel Pointe, a 152-unit retirement community on an 18-acre campus in Grand Rapids. And Titan SenQuest president Doug Allen tells GlobeSt.com that the western half of Michigan is a superb market for senior housing and this $10.3 million, off-market transaction will play a key role in both the company's regional and national expansion.
“Western Michigan is a senior-centric market; it's very different from the other parts of the state,” Allen says. The region has a good number of senior centers and its older population typically wants “to stay close to their families and are not moving south. They are not as transient as other communities. The sustainability of the senior population in other markets,” such as Eastern Michigan, “was questionable.”
Titan SenQuest had primarily based itself in Texas, where the company has five senior communities, but has begun building a Midwest regional presence. It now owns two communities in Ohio, including one in Akron, and just closed the purchase of another in Missouri.
The Sentinel Pointe community, located at 2900 Thornhills Ave. SE, was owned by a private family partnership that had built and owned it for generations. Allen hopes that that making the community part of a regional player will improve its operations and improve the residents' quality of life. For example, “food is one of your largest expenses and this will give it the opportunity to benefit from regional buying.” Furthermore, Akron is only about four hours away and Titan SenQuest officials can “leverage talent between the two communities. We're going to exchange ideas and begin to learn from one another.”
And the company also has an overarching vision that they plan to bring to this city, Allen adds. “We are going to use Sentinel Pointe as a gathering spot for all seniors in the area, not just our residents. We want to be the face of senior housing in Grand Rapids.”
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
