My wife and I have decided to stay here at The Colonnade. We have a 4-story building with 36 units in each, and about 73 semi-detached casitas. The total residency is about 350 people. The best thing here is living in a community with people that have higher education levels and they do not flaunt them. We have a number of PhDs on our floor, retired military officers, and everyone treats everyone the same, no matter how many degrees one has. And we regard the residents as the best thing living here. Secondly, the units themselves are very nice. We have 1600 square feet and that's next to the largest, which is 1800 square feet. Most of them are 2 bedrooms with at least 2 baths, some with 2 and a half baths. The food is good but the service has been poor since Covid. They just can't seem to get enough staff in. We have function areas such as fitness and maintenance, dining, and other recreational duties. We have a full schedule of activities.

I toured The Colonnade. The apartments are beautiful, there's no getting away from that. But it is a buy-in, and they only give you 10 meals a month. You have to buy your own food and cook and all that stuff. The staff who accommodated me was okay. I was with a friend of mine, and it was a man, and she spoke mostly to him rather than to me. I was the one who was interested and she spoke mostly to him, and that wasn't nice. She asked, 'Is that your boyfriend?' And I said no but she kept talking to him and not me. The food was OK, nothing special.

We chose The Colonnade because it has casitas and patios. They have casitas with 1900 square feet of space. The person we met was friendly and helpful. It was very nice and upscale. The rooms were very accommodating; they were very nice. They have everything there. They have a lot of parties and get togethers with all the people who are there, and the staff are with them as well. It's pristine, it's absolutely in perfect condition, the grounds are so beautiful, and the landscape is to die for. It's in a nice environment, it's close to the hospital, it's close to all the doctors, and it's easy to get there -- we can even go in a golf cart if we want.

The Colonnade was brand new, and the village was just awesome. They provide breakfast, and it was awesome. We had some friends who moved in to the independent part, but this is a buy end. Whoever did their interior design really did a good thing. They are breaking ground on an assisted living facility and memory care. It’s beautiful but also extremely expensive.

The Colonnade is within a couple of miles of my home. I had visited there many times, so I know it very well. It was also very welcoming, and the woman that worked with me there stuck with me for years and still I didn’t go there. I find them first class, and they’re much newer than the others. They’ve just put up their very latest condos; they’re very nice, and they’re filling up fast.

The Colonnade was close to the hospital, and they probably had the most impressive rooms, some of them were large, and they have casitas with a 2-car garage. It’s like living in a house, totally independent, but you have access to the main building where all the apartments are. They provide you 10 meals per month. However, I don’t want to live that far out. They had a very nice dining area, and I liked their pricing structure. Also, they take care of you completely, and you get assurance of your health taken care of as you grow older.

I visited The Colonnade. I would not venture there again. You have to go out of the building to get to the dining room. A friend of mine moved in, and I knew she spent a lot of money. It was right on Grand Avenue, and when we were out on the terrace, we could not hear one another talk. The traffic was so loud. I only saw where my friend lives. They just built four brand-new, four-story buildings there on Grand Avenue. They don't have dining facilities within the building. You have to go out of the building to eat. The parking is very poor.

Food service is poor. The food servers are poorly trained. The food in inconsistent in quality and quantity. Rolls are stale and hard. Take-out boxes are no longer provided. Too costly. And take-out food can make you sick, so says management. Very little variety in meals and meals are not as good as the two other Sun Health communities: Grandview Terrace and La Loma Villiage. The food choices at the other two communities are much better and more upscale. For example: Grandview Terrace had steak and lobster for New Years eve. We have had lobster once since 2009. Too expensive says management of the Colonnade. Note: All three communities are run by Sun Health but obviously with different budgets, especially for food. Used to have an Included Happy Hour every Friday. Now every other Happy Hour charges for drinks. I could go on. The bottom line is: Don't move in here. Most of the benefits touted are out and out lies and half truths.

The staff was very nice and very thorough at The Colonnade. They introduced us to the residents there, and they were very friendly. They had a nice library, cards, and billiards room, inside swimming pool, and exercise area, and they're adding an outside swimming pool. It includes the amenities that are offered by Sun City Grand development. We liked the place. It was the most competitively priced for the same amount of square footage in the area.

We went to visit The Colonnade. It's a very expensive community, but it's a very beautiful community. It's big and modern.

We visited The Colonnade. I didn’t have a formal walk-through type of thing like I did with the other facility, but like the other facility, they provide three meals a day, and that would be hindrance because I don’t eat three meals a day.

They have all kinds of activities in The Colonnade. There's a large party every month. Every other week, they have what they call happy hour on Friday evenings. They have social gatherings, like ice cream socials, cookies, and lemonade socials. They have an activity director who plan all kinds of things, like trips to the ball game, shopping, the symphony, or casino. They go out all the time. If you went to everything available, you'd be gone every day. It's a gated community, so we can only enter through the gate. Like any such facility, there's good and bad food, but they do have a variety of menus, sort of on a 6-week rotation plan. They always have maybe 5 or 6 entrees and 6 or 8 desserts. You have plenty of choices. Generally, if there's something you don’t like very much, there's usually something else you can choose. It's in a lovely dining room, and service is like a restaurant setting. There's no assigned seating, servers come and wait like you're in a restaurant, and you order off a menu with different courses. We live in a garden home they call "Casitas." It's large, and I understand that it's the largest for independent living townhomes in Arizona. We live in one that is about 1800 sq. ft. with a 2-car garage, high ceilings, 2 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, and a living room. It's very comfortable, just like a nice home. We're not attached, and we don't share walls with anybody. We only have 1-story cottages.

The only one we really toured is The Colonnade. They have different facilities, and they're still building. They had individual villas, like little homes, and then they have town homes, and then they have apartments, so they have a bit of variety. The staff was very good. Everybody seemed very capable and helpful. It's fairly expensive. If it's right for you, it's a very nice facility. We had a meal there; it was very good. The dining room was very lovely. Only then, they had just one. It's not multiple dining rooms, and then they have like a café, which is informal. I think they have an indoor pool, and they have some exercise activities.