Welcome!

Thank you for your interest in our community – I wanted to personally give you a bit of history on The Meadowlands; why we are here, who we serve, and what we hope to accomplish in the community.

For many years I was a St. Charles-based health care executive over several different hospitals and health care centers. In this position, it was my job to solve the major problems that the hospitals faced.

Something I ran into time and time again was the issue of finding appropriate assisted living communities in St. Charles County for seniors that were being discharged from our hospitals. Because of their condition, they could no longer go home alone, and yet they were too independent for the high level of care that skilled nursing provides. Assisted living was the logical choice. All of the local assisted living facilities had a waiting list, forcing seniors to relocate far from their families at a time when having their loving support nearby was most critical.

During my time as a hospital executive, I watched our corporation develop specialty care in the metro area for children and other population groups based on the model of healing and compassionate care, but there was nothing like that for seniors. Folks who had lived long, full lives, raised families, and had been respected professionals had no similar option when it came to senior living.

In 2004, I personally and independently commissioned a study on senior services in the area with the purpose of building a senior specialty. Based on the results of the study, I found that people want: a) local services, b) innovation c) quality, and d) home-like care environments. The study also showed that in order to get the services seniors and their families wanted, they were being forced to move outside St. Charles County or to make multiple moves. With the graying of America, I knew this problem would only get worse.

During this time I also began interviewing families; I wanted to get a more personal perspective. I learned that in addition to the struggle to find appropriate assisted living services, many families were faced with the overwhelming difficulty of caring for a parent or spouse suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s. It tore my heart out to hear that they had nowhere to turn for home-like communities that specialized in dementia.

Care giving family members were left with few choices. They could endure the daily struggles of providing care for their loved one, place them in a nursing home, or place them into a facility retrofitted for memory care. After touring the memory care facilities in the area, I found that the quality ranged from very high for those who could afford it to wholly unacceptable. There was simply no affordable option that offered a high level of care, and there was no community specifically designed from its inception for the wide-ranging needs of those with dementia and Alzheimer’s.

As my research progressed, I began looking for potential partners to help build a truly exceptional assisted living and memory care community based on these findings. I knew Tom Hughes of T. R. Hughes, Inc., was a local builder and community leader and I went to him with my idea. He shared with me the story of his own family’s struggle of finding a community for his father and what they felt was the vital importance of his being able to age in place.

We decided then and there to pool our collective resources to build a team that could accomplish the goal of creating a community that would serve the seniors and families of the St. Charles area. We wanted to design something beyond average, something grounded in the principle of providing exceptional, loving, and healing care to seniors, and something that would be accessible, affordable, and of the highest possible quality.

We partnered with a local company, Arrow Senior Living, owned by St. Charles native and senior housing expert, Stephanie R. Harris, Esquire. She joined us to develop a senior community founded on the latest research, best practices, and of the most innovative design. Arrow Senior Living shared our vision to set the standard for exceptional senior living in an industry that lacks specified standards to help raise the bar of expectation of what quality care means for seniors.

We are also privileged to have Shawn Saale, Dr. Carlos Seuc, Grace Harmon, and Bob Wamhoff, among others, to share in our mission: To provide exceptional, loving, and healing care to seniors.

Assisted Living at the Meadowlands is just phase one of a four phase community that will include independent living, senior villas, and skilled nursing – a continuum of care to meet seniors’ full range of needs.

I invite you to contact our community to learn more about what The Meadowlands has to offer.

Warmest Regards,

Kevin F. Kast