$10M, 177-Unit Retirement Project Delivers, At Last

The Arbrook is a 177-unit, three-story development, the first of perhaps a dozen that will rise in a three-to-five-year building plan for the Covenant Group, says its president, Gary Staats. The idea is to deliver non-subsidized, full-service retirement living at an affordable cost to the 55 and over crowd.

The Arbook's units range from 300 sf to 800 sf and carry price tags of $895 to $1,845 per month on a month-to-month rental basis. That, says Staats, is $300 to $500 less than its other retirement product.

The Covenant Group owns seven communities and manages 17 for the not-for-profit Atlanta-based Guardian Foundation in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and its homeport of Texas. The long-range plan accompanying the Arbrook, owned by the Guardian Foundation, is to add new markets, but Staats isn't saying where other than they will be major metros in the South and Southeast.

Staats tells GlobeSt.com that the specialty product was launched close to home simply because it made sense plus Arlington's demographics are a good fit. The seven-acre project is a design of Laing & Associates Architects of Grand Prairie. CGI Construction, an affiliate of the Covenant Group, was the builder.

The Covenant Group, founded in 1990, started work in January 2001, but had to practically start from scratch after two fires caused major damage each time. "This is a product that we were determined to bring to the marketplace," Staats said in a press release.