GENEVA – By next year, a senior housing community will have risen from the fields near Mill Creek.
This week, representatives of Schaumburg-based Friendship Senior Options broke ground on the Greenfields of Geneva senior retirement living complex, celebrating with a ceremony and reception at the site of the project on the north end of the Mill Creek Subdivision.
Construction work will begin in earnest in the next few weeks said Ronette Isco, marketing director for Greenfields. And residents should be able to begin moving into the new apartments in about 14 months, Isco said.
Construction will be fully complete in about 18 months, she said.
"We haven't been given exact dates," Isco said. "It will be as soon as all our financing process is completed."
Friendship Senior Options has publicly marketed the Greenfields project since 2006, when it opened a sales office in downtown Geneva.
The project will offer 147 new one- and two-bedroom independent living apartment homes, open to those aged 62 years and older. The apartments will measure from 747 square feet to as much as 1,637 square feet.
The complex will also offer 51 assisted living units, 43 skilled nursing suites and 26 memory-support units.
Greenfields will be built on 25 acres adjacent to the Tanna Farms Golf Club on Keslinger Road, west of Geneva. Some reports had estimated the project's value at $25 million as of 2009. Construction on the project needed to wait until the company had presold at least 75 percent of its independent living units.
By mid-2008, FSO had sold 50 percent of the units, leading the group to believe it could begin construction as soon as spring 2009.
But economic troubles that began in 2008 forced the Greenfields group to delay construction, as it sought to complete financing for the project.
The Greenfields group has since pushed beyond those difficulties, however, and work will now begin soon.
Isco said her team has presold well more than 75 percent of the units, finding strong sales results from retirees who now live in Geneva, who have family living in Geneva or who once lived in Geneva and now would like to return.
