Bethany Plans Sprawling Small-home Concept To Attract Tomorrow’s Senior Living Residents

Bethany Care Society is celebrating its 80th year in 2025, with plans for future growth including a sprawling urban senior living community built with small-home concepts in mind.

The central and southern Alberta-based senior living provider operates 11 care homes and 15 senior living properties serving over 2,000 older adults across the continuum from independent living to skilled nursing.

Its latest project in Calgary, Alberta, is slated to span 420 beds and include multiple small-home concepts in a big-box wrapper. The community is all part of the organization’s attempt to evolve for a new customer in the coming years.

“There’s a real opportunity here to create a different type of community feel both within the small homes but then within the larger community, in the building itself,” Bethany Care Society CEO Jennifer McCue told SHN in regard to the latest development push.

In the last four years, the organization has managed to reach an average census between 95% and 99% across its continuing care higher-acuity portfolio as demand for services remains high.

“Unlike conversations in the U.S. around trying to increase occupancy, we are trying to keep up with demand,” McCue said.

But with occupancies at communities running high, the organization has dealt with longer wait times for long-term care placements as capacity is pushed to the limit.

High-acuity demand prompts innovative project design

At the center of the organization’s plans in Calgary is increased demand for higher-acuity services delivered in a new way.

The mid-rise development was designed by Zeidler Architecture and includes 14 rooms per floor with a shared living room, kitchen and laundry facilities. Residents of the community also will have access to amenities such as an art room, theater and fitness center.

The new care home will offer a “modern, home-like environment” for older adults and adults with disabilities.

“The redevelopment of Bethany Calgary is our goal to take an urban setting, take a building envelope that will hold 420 individual rooms holding 30, 14-bed discrete homes within its envelope,” McCue said.

The organization has high-acuity expertise, with extensive assisted living and dementia care offerings. McCue said Bethany Care Society would look to grow its aging-in-place services for older adults looking to live longer at home, while expanding skilled nursing to meet growing demand for acute care.

McCue noted the company’s growth is often reliant on government-based funding sources as a nonprofit senior living and care provider. The project in Calgary is moving ahead with $114 million CAD in federal funding.

“We have to balance growth with modernization,” McCue said. “Bethany Calgary is being redeveloped because the government is now investing in a modernization program in the post-Covid-19 environment.”

The original portion of the Calgary development was built in the ‘70s, and Bethany chose to redesign the community to fit in with recent trends in senior living. This coincides with the provincial government in Alberta eliminating shared capacity within senior living settings.

“Bethany has been looking for many years for a path to redevelopment for this old infrastructure and it’s shifted our focus to look at modernization and growth in a different way.”

McCue noted that Canadian seniors, like older adults in the U.S., want more independence and choice around wellness and lifestyle-based living. They also desire building relationships with caregivers and freedom of movement, she added.

“It represents a larger part of our portfolio and it represents the evolution of care for seniors in a built environment that is very much a tool that will help us deliver care and enable residents to have a higher quality of life,” McCue said.

Bethany Care Society isn’t a stranger to the small-home approach,.In 1999, the organization built a 60-bed care home that shares common spaces across three homes of 20 residents each.

WIth the new design of Bethany Calgary, McCue envisions the organization growing its ability to offer hospitality-based services along with more thoughtful life enrichment spaces as staff connect with smaller groups of residents.

“What this site promotes is people getting out into the community and it promotes living outside of your home and building a social network,” McCue said. “One of the things that we really turned our attention to is supporting our seniors’ opportunities for engagement and building relationships.”

Looking forward, McCue sees the organization’s ability to provide high-acuity care increasing with the influx of demand based on the nonprofit’s extensive track record in offering care to older adults. That extends to the increase of older adults experiencing cognitive decline and incidents of dementia sooner.

“That trend is definitely a disturbing trend and we at Bethany are looking for ways that we might be able to support people with early onset dementia in a way that’s more supportive of their lifestyle,” McCue said.

For all senior living operators, McCue said organizations must enhance hospitality services and dining to improve the quality of life of older adults that enter senior living environments with increased care needs sooner.

“Those are priorities for us for the next year that are in response to what we’re seeing at the community level,” McCue said.

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