The tour I had in Grace Commons went well. She was a very good tour guide, very informative, and showed us everything. The place was beautiful and new. It was very impressive. The dining area was more like a restaurant. They had a beauty salon, exercise rooms, and little places to go sit and socialize. The thing we didn't like about it is because independent living and assisted living were two separate wings. My mom was going to be moving into independent living and then probably transitioning to assisted living, and she didn't want to have to move. That was a big reason we didn't choose them. Although the public spaces were really impressive, the rooms themselves were a little underwhelming. I thought they were small. They had small balconies, the ones that we saw, and then with industrial views. The building is out in the open, it just felt kind of cold.

We're gonna go with Grace Commons. We're just waiting for some lab tests to come through. The tour was good and very informative. It's a brand-new place. The tour person was good and showed us several units. We kept changing ideas and we looked at six different units. There were two-bedrooms, one-bedrooms, porches, and patio doors. We're dealing with a small dog, so we had to get that one in. I think it will be the best place for my sister. The staff was great, took us everywhere, and showed us everything. There's a fitness room on the same floor as the floor she would be on, so that's a plus. It will be just around the corner from her because she walks with a cane. There is an activity center just downstairs from her on the elevator that does more of the group exercises like chair yoga and balance classes, which we were interested in. Even though there's COVID they were separated, so they're still doing them. Some places aren't doing anything because of COVID and shut everything down, but this is still happening at this place. There's a hairdresser there. I did not see a library, but my sister doesn't read, so that doesn't really matter. The unit that she picked has a very large laundry room with a full size washer and dryer. She could even put a couple of dressers in there if she wanted to for storage. The unit itself is perfect. Another plus on that one is there's underground parking. My sister doesn't drive or have a car, but I would get a remote control for the garage door opener, so I could drive in and she could just go outside of her apartment, go down the elevator into the garage, and I could pick her up right there for going to the grocery store. She wouldn't have to go all the way up to the front lobby where I would have to pick her up. She could just go down the elevator and I could be there in my car and she could just get in there. With the COVID thing I'm not going to the lobby and all that. We're looking for independent living with an option to maybe move to assisted, and they have that. They had a dining room available and the staff gave us a menu. I went over the food choices, and there's a bar area that will be opened after this COVID thing is done. They only opened their facility kind of in the middle of this pandemic, so they haven't really fully opened that part of it yet. Normally, a new resident would have to pay $2,000 as a fee. It's not a security deposit, it's more of a fee so that they can fix the room up after you leave. You don't get it back and everyone gets charged that $2,000. In my sister's case she's only planning on being there just for the winter until we figure out. Maybe she'll be there forever, but right now she plans on going back to her house once they figure out what's going on with her. They waived that $2,000 to $500, which was nice. That was kind of a deciding point. That's a lot, and we would've picked a different place. That was kind of a helpful deciding point that they waived that. At Grace Commons you add $100 for the food a month, and you spend it on breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Her apartment would have a two-bedroom, two-bathroom, so if you had a visitor they could just use the other bathroom and they wouldn't be using your bathroom. It's on the second floor, which is undesirable compared to a first or third floor, so they're discounted. My sister really doesn't care if it's a second floor, and the view from the bedroom has really no view. It faces another wall, but my sister doesn't care because she would just keep the window shut in that bedroom. That room was discounted because of the view and because it's on the second floor. That made it almost $450 less a month, so that's quite a bit of money less. Money wise they went out that way. They had a theater with big comfy chairs.