A new memory care center is planning to have five facilities open by next year that will create hundreds of jobs. Each 43,000-square-foot facility, dubbed CERTUS Premiere Memory Care Living, would create 60 permanent jobs and 245 temporary construction jobs. Each $13 million memory care community would include 63 beds and be divided into two wings.

CERTUS Senior Living is planning to have memory care centers in:

  • Mount Dora
  • Waterford Lakes
  • Veterans Parkway in Orange City
  • Longwood on the west side along Interstate 4
  • Dr. Phillips on Conroy-Windermere Road

Five more are planned for Melbourne, Stuart, Port St Lucie and Jacksonville.

“CERTUS sees this as an unmet need. So we see that as our focus as developers, owners and operators to provide memory care communities,” Samantha Hollister, president of CERTUS Senior Management LLC, told Orlando Business Journal.

Hollister said the permanent job positions, including LPNs and RNs, would earn a 20-30 percent higher wage than the average in Central Florida.

CEO Glen Pawlowski previously told OBJ The Alzheimer Association estimates that 500,000 people in Florida alone suffer from Alzheimer’s disease — a number expected to go up to 750,000 by 2025.

Troy Cox, chief investment officer, said CERTUS has spent the last two years designing and planning for the additional communities, and now they’re ready for the market.

“The demographics are right, and there is more demand than supply,” Cox said.

CERTUS Premiere Memory Care Living is specifically designed to serve seniors suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Hollister said each community takes a research-based approach in its design, such as lighting in bathrooms, contrast walls with paint colors and the type of flooring:

“Evidence shows how someone aging with dementia sees colors and patterns differently.”

In the center of the community will be an authentic, two-story town center serving as a middle point for the community’s two neighborhoods that will have a bistro, a salon and street lights, benches and patios.

Melbourne-based Certified General Contractors Inc. is the general contractor, and Bessolo Design Group Inc. is the architect for all the facilities.

Adam Broadway, president and CEO of Certified General Contractors, said two more bid packages are going out in the next 45 days for the Longwood and Waterford Lakes locations.
Those interested can reach out to Broadway’s office at (321) 984-5000.