Business View Magazine | Volume 8, Issue 10

189 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 8, ISSUE 10 GARDANT MANAGEMENT SOLUT IONS Luckily, Gardant Management Solutions, the Bourbonnais, Illinois-based provider, has carved out a niche in the Medicaid space, presenting some attractive and highly sustainable opportunities for lower- and middle-income baby boomers in assisted living. Following a middle-market senior housing model that relies on State Medicaid waivers (in Illinois and Indiana, principally) to carry the costs of services ancillary to room and board, Gardant has been able to meet the needs of its target demographic while bringing a suite of services for managing affordable communities to the fore. The company was formed in 1999, growing out of a consulting company that provided services primarily to senior living and healthcare providers. They opened their first community in 2000. Now, they’re the 10th largest provider of assisted living in the country, according to a recent survey published by Argentum. Today, Gardant manages a portfolio of 56 communities in six states, 50 of which are Medicaid certified. “Most of those are assisted living communities designed to serve individuals of all incomes,” offers Vice President, Rick Banas. “And, in most cases, they were newly constructed communities. We work with owners and developers, providing assistance and advice from an operational, construction, architectural, and review standpoint. If you take a look at our website, at the photographs of the communities we manage, they typically look like any nice, private- paying, assisted living community. About the only difference is that we’re not the country club-style communities that you might see. The design probably resembles more of the newly- styled Holiday Inn Express and Hampton Inn hotels.” These facilities go over “really well” with residents, according to Banas. “A lot of our communities are funded through low-income