Milestone Retirement Seeks More Growth In 2025, With Eye On Middle Market

Milestone Retirement Communities is focused on diversifying its senior living portfolio, including future joint ventures beyond the company’s existing communities.

Milestone has in the last year revamped some of its communities to meet middle-market senior living demand, such as by changing care offerings and fine-tuning staffing levels to accommodate more price points.

“The middle market remains one of our biggest challenges as an industry, and it’s a focus for us,” said Milestone CEO Caryl Ridgeway. “There are things that we’re going to have to do differently as an industry.”

While the company’s 18 existing communities across seven states were performing well, Caryl Ridgeway said, the company saw an opportunity to reach more prospects and solve affordability of senior living in its markets. Presently, a total of 11 communities managed by Milestone are owned by real estate investment trust (REIT) Ventas.

For example, Milestone took an assisted living and memory care community and consolidated the property to all assisted living, while modifying pricing to meet assisted living rates rather than more costly memory care.

Taking that prototype, Caryl Ridgeway will be doing a similar consolidation of the continuum across three additional communities in the company’s portfolio to consolidate care and allow Milestone to offer more attainable middle-market rates.

“We changed the product type to a more enhanced version of assisted living and we can staff at levels needed within AL,” Caryl Ridgeway said. “It makes sense—less overhead, greater efficiency in staffing, and greater efficiency in costs.”

Making these changes, Caryl Ridgeway said, would help improve operations, resident retention and satisfaction in being able to reach more prospects needing middle-market offerings in senior living.

To develop communities in the future, Caryl Ridgeway said Milestone would welcome future new development in the middle market with smaller footprints and unit sizes with potential to standardize aspects of a new building project, she added.

In 2025, Milestone Chief Strategy Officer Cayden Ridgeway said it’s fair to “expect growth” for Milestone, noting the company was at a place to scale.

“We want to be really thoughtful about this and we want to grow the business and grow it in a measured way,” Cayden Ridgeway told SHN.

The biggest operational challenge Caryl Ridgeway sees ahead comes on staffing, including rising staffing costs and insurance cost increases.

To help solve some of those staffing pains, Cayden Ridgeway said the company is focused on recruitment of senior living talent and retention of staff, with the plans for hiring an additional regional operations director position and regional sales staff going forward.

This comes as the Vancouver, Washington-based operator has spent the last 18 months shifting the organization onto a footing that could be scaled in the future, Cayden Ridgeway said, diversifying with JV partnerships and lease agreements alongside its third-party management portfolio.

“The horizon of what we’re looking at is a bit longer than the 5-year third-party management contract,” Cayden Ridgeway said. “We need to invest in other models like a lease or JV so that we’re not getting all of our money on five-year terms.”

That diversification follows Milestone’s overhaul of its various tech partners, implementing new systems including a new electronic health record (EHR) system.

“We’re extremely positive because of all the traction and work that we’ve done to get us to where we are now,” Caryl Ridgeway said.

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