Photo courtesy of Maplewood Senior Living
Shane Herlet
Co-CEO, Maplewood Senior Living
Age: 54
Industry experience: 30 years
Westport-based Maplewood Senior Living is raising the bar for retirement era living standards in urban areas. In 2021, the company opened its first Inspīr brand senior living residence on New York City’s Upper East Side, providing a new offering for seniors seeking to combine city living with hospitality-level living standards. A second Inspīr location opened early this year in Washington, D.C.’s Dupont Circle as Maplewood tests the potential for expansion. Co-CEO Shane Herlet has 30 years of experience in the senior living industry, managing more than 3,000 housing units during his career while acting as president of the company’s HEART Foundation, a nonprofit that provides financial support to employees with unexpected life circumstances.
Q: What’s the history of Maplewood’s growth and expansion in Connecticut and beyond?
A: Maplewood started around 2006 with a single property in Danbury and then in 2010, there were some opportunities coming out of the financial crisis to pick off some poor-performing assets in Newtown and Orange. That got us moving with a broader platform. Since then, we’ve done two additional development deals in Norwalk and Darien, and then we expanded into Massachusetts on Cape Cod and Weston, and out to Ohio and more recently to New York and D.C.
Q: Which care options have the most growth potential?
A: Typically, most of our properties offer some variety of assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing. The Silver Tsunami is going to represent sheer numbers of people. From there, you’ll have demand based upon different markets and services and amenity levels that people will be looking for. Because of that, we’ve got more mid-level market offerings all the way up to our luxury urban settings and those pricepoints: anywhere from $6,000 a month up to the mid-teens.
Q: How did your Inspīr brand originate?
A: It was delayed over a year [during the pandemic] but we did open our first Inspīr product in 2021. The idea was there had been a shortage of new openings offering a higher level of care in an uber-amenity environment for quite some time. We saw that opportunity, and we looked at different sites within New York for the better part of three or four years before landing that site on the Upper East Side.
Q: What population demographics does Maplewood seek when selecting locations?
A: High net worth, age and income qualifications. Another big part is you’ve got to be able to staff the buildings. Some providers have developed in an affordable area without being in proximity to an employment pool they can pull from, and it makes operations very challenging.
Q: What does your market research indicate about types of services and amenities that resonate with potential residents?
A: Typically they are looking for care. There’s been some type of an event, slowly over time, to move to a congregate setting with care offerings. Beyond the care, people are looking for highly amenitized spaces. Dining is an essential key component to most decisions, and programming opportunities within the walls of the property but also in the broader market. We’ve got extensive relationships with Broadway [at Inspir Carnegie Hill].
Q: What role does dining services play?
A: It’s one of the most impactful service offerings beyond care. We all can relate to having an enjoyable culinary experience with family members, whether an adult child or grandchildren are visiting. The culinary experience needs to exceed some restaurant offerings, and that’s the [chefs] we’re attracting at this point. They don’t want to work the crazy overnight hours, but have a more meaningful purpose service opportunity taking care of people. That’s the DNA of the chefs that we’re pulling in right now. It’s extremely impactful to build that brand loyalty and provide the ultimate customer experience.
Q: How many of your communities have robotic assistants?
A: A lot of the robotic technology was exciting and fun right out of the gate, but maybe not a real value a lot of the time. In the last two or three years, the technology is absolutely meaningful and it has augmented our service offerings. We use robotics and AI in our Washington, D.C. location right now, certainly in the culinary and dining area, and safety checks throughout the property. These robotics can actually navigate elevator banks. The underlying software marrying it with the hardware is where it’s coming together.
Q: How much growth potential does the company have in terms of property counts and new metro areas?
A: The difficulty right now with ground-up development is construction costs, but there definitely are some opportunities we are looking at for ground-up development. That’s just a matter of time before we see a lot of growth. We’re excited about value-add opportunities, with several deals coming over the wire: underperforming assets that might need some material capital expenditure improvements and operational improvements.
Q: What are your geographic expansion plans?
A: As we’ve stabilized New York and just went doors open in D.C., there clearly is an opportunity. A lot of people are evaluating what has worked, and just being in one urban market doesn’t necessarily translate to another.
Herlet’s Five Favorite Teams:
- Ohio State Buckeyes
- Boston Bruins
- Cleveland Browns
- Cleveland Guardians
- Hartford Yard Goats
