Primrose Retirement Communities Plans 98-Unit Facility in Rogers

by Jennifer Joyner ([email protected]) 335 views 

South Dakota-based Primrose Retirement Communities LLC will soon break ground on a multimillion-dollar, 98-unit retirement facility at 650 S. Dodson Road in Rogers.

The planned retirement community would bring 50 new jobs to the region and is expected to open next year, according to a press release from Primrose.

Plans for the community include an 88,000-SF facility with 50 assisted living apartments and 24 memory care apartments, in addition to 24 townhouse units in 12 buildings, measuring about 3,200 SF each.

Primrose president B.J. Schaefbauer said the company’s in-house research team looked at NWA for about three years before making the decision to move into the market. The decision was based primarily on the demographics of the region and the price of real estate. 

“We do our homework on the front end,” Schaefbauer said. “We feel like we’re going to be successful in the market. It’s a great market.”

He added that the company, with its choice of building mid-sized, rather than large-scale retirement facilities, favors mid-sized markets to larger metros. “There’s our niche. We’re just homegrown boys from small-town South Dakota,” Schaefbauer said.

Pointing to the size of the company’s home town of Aberdeen, which the latest U.S. Census counts as having about 26,000 residents, he added that Primrose “wants to keep that family, community feel within its facilities.”     

Primrose, through JT Properties Investments LLC, purchased the 20-acre property for $1.2 million in February.

C.R. Crawford Construction of Fayetteville will handle construction, and the project is being financed by Bear State Bank N.A. of Little Rock. A groundbreaking ceremony is set for 11 a.m. March 22.

Founded in 1989, Primrose has more than 30 locations throughout the U.S., and, with the opening of the Rogers facility, Primrose will have a presence in 16 states.