A little more than a year after announcing it was scaling back to focus resources in seven core states, Good Samaritan Society announced Tuesday that it was developing a new, $200 million comprehensive senior living and healthcare campus in South Dakota.
The new community, billed as first-of-its-kind by Good Sam leaders, will be known as Founder’s Crossing and include 510 units, including up to 180 skilled nursing and short-term rehab beds by 2028. The vision is to produce one interconnected community that relies on the provider’s integration with Sanford Health to deliver everything from primary care to labs and X-rays to prescriptions and groceries on the 60-acre campus.
“It’s going to simplify the aging experience in a way we’ve never done,” Good Sam CEO and President Nate Schema told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News. “To have everything under one roof, connected by hallways, in South Dakota’s [winter weather] … you’ll be able to walk your loved one to the physician’s office without ever going outside or to the pharmacy or to get groceries.”
While other Good Sam campuses include some components of Founder’s Crossing, the new campus will offer the provider’s broadest continuum yet. It also might be a model for the organization’s regrowth.
In early 2023, Good Sam announced it was leaving 15 states to focus on its aging services in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado. This is the first expansion announced since, and the first major new construction project under the Good Sam banner in “upwards of 10 years,” Schema said.
“We made that big pivot to move from 22 states to our core seven and reinvest in them, and we’re making good on that promise,” he added. “We’re continuing to reinvest additional dollars and reimagine how care is delivered for our seniors.”
Inside the details
Schema said Sioux Falls, SD, made sense as the first place to test the expanded model, given that the community is adding about 5,000 residents annually and has a robust healthcare system. Sanford, the nation’s largest rural healthcare system, is based in Sioux Falls. The two organizations merged in 2019.
Sanford-tested resources will be available at Founders Crossing, including the extension of a pharmacy relationship with Lewis Drug. The consumer pharmacy has 50 stores in the upper Midwest and operates 11 stores attached to existing Sanford clinics, the provider said in a press release today.
Lewis also has supported Good Sam’s nursing homes, and will be able to do so across the continuum of care at Founder’s Crossing, Schema said. That relationship won Good Sam accolades late last year. North Dakota and South Dakota had the highest COVID vaccination rates among nursing home residents, a fact attributed to Lewis’ willingness to continue delivering vaccine to Good Sam facilities.
Construction crews are expected to break ground on the community this spring.
It will be completed in phases with the first of 146 villas, 120 independent living apartments, 32 assisted living apartments and 32 memory care assisted living apartments opening in mid-2026.
The short-term rehabilitation and nursing center, Sanford Health Clinic and Lewis Drug are projected to follow by 2028.
Schema said the completed project would be a destination not just for senior living and care, but a destination that would draw people to Sioux Falls.
“We see this campus as being the blueprint for our future senior care model,” he said. “We’re pretty bullish on it. We have smaller models with a few less components, and we know it works. It’s not a question of whether it works … It really just comes down to what the market demands.”
