Interview by Pat Spence, VP Community Experience, Life Care Services
Photography by Rob Karosis, Peter Ciardelli, Greg Bruce Hubbard
Published in the Q1 2020 Special Edition of Heartfelt Moments, by Life Care Services®, An LCS® Company
President of Gates & Dickson
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Brooke Ciardelli, President of Gates & Dickson, who developed The Village at White River Junction (The Village) in Vermont. My intent was to write an article to discuss an event on Shakespeare’s King Lear and the questions raised on whether the play had been intentionally written to infer King Lear was not merely mad, but rather was inflicted with Alzheimer’s disease. That story is now on hold for another time because while speaking with Brooke, I became fascinated with the story of how The Village came to be what it is today.
This is the story of her journey, of the passion, creative brilliance and vision it took to see this project through, and how the end result changed the scope of life for the seniors that come to The Village. It is as heartwarming as it is cutting edge and just about everything in-between. But rather than me tell the story, I’ll let Brooke tell it through the interview process that got us here. There is tremendous food for thought in the picture she will paint for you. When the story ends, you will see and feel how creating a community enhanced through the beauty of a cultural journey of the arts was able to impact the lives of those that came to live there. I hope this story inspires you to set your sights on higher possibilities by recognizing how a single, creative idea can reshape how we see senior living today and in the future. For The Village it simply took how fortitude in believing in those possibilities has changed an entire village.
It is as heartwarming as it is cutting edge and just about everything in-between. But rather than me tell the story, I’ll let Brooke tell it through the interview process that got us here. There is tremendous food for thought in the picture she will paint for you. When the story ends, you will see and feel how creating a community enhanced through the beauty of a cultural journey of the arts was able to impact the lives of those that came to live there. I hope this story inspires you to set your sights on higher possibilities by recognizing how a single, creative idea can reshape how we see senior living today and in the future. For The Village it simply took how fortitude in believing in those possibilities has changed an entire village.
Q: Brooke, you have had a very unique background and successful career in the arts. What made you change focus and delve into the senior living world?
A: I have spent 25 plus years working in theater and live events as a director, producer, writer, and educator. In that time I learned that the job of an artist is to expose the human condition and engage the emotions of the audience. As an audience member, when you enter the theater, you are invited into the world of a story, and go on a journey with its characters. I believe we live our lives like stories and all good stories have a beginning, middle, and an end – the journey of our lives. When I was first approached by my now business partner, Byron Hathorn, to join him on developing a senior living project, my first question was, “what is the narrative?” “what is the story of the central character?” which in this case was the seniors themselves, “what is the story of the supporting characters?” – the adult children or family members.
The process began with exploring the story of the prospective resident and the story of the location. We led the architecture, design, and programming process from these early questions. We determined the kinds of people who might join this type of community and researched the essential elements of their lives, prior to entering the senior segment. What type of lifestyle did they have? What were their houses like? Their hobbies? What were beloved activities which had become challenging by the natural aging process and how might we be able to bring them back into their lives with great design that eliminated the obstacles and illuminated the joyous parts of being alive.
For example – many people in this region over their lives have participated in cooking classes at King Arthur Flour (a locally-based, nationally-recognized baking products, services retail and educational center) – so we designed our community kitchen to allow for demonstration and cooking classes. Gardening is well-loved in our region, so outdoor patios and terraces offer raised beds for both flowers and vegetables and a vertical herb wall.
Smith & Sons Kitchen – Assisted Living
In my 18 years as the Founder and Producing Artistic Director of Northern Stage (an award-winning, professional regional theater located across the street from The Village), year-after-year we watched weekend-night subscribers eventually move their dates to daylight matinées because driving at night became too difficult, then we saw them come as a group because only one was still driving even during daytime, and then they told us they were sad to cancel their subscription because they just couldn’t find transportation to the theater anymore.
The regional population of this area is approximately 125,000 people, and Northern Stage had 40,000 visitors per year – the theater was a central part of many of their lives – so we made sure The Village had easy sidewalks with a wheelchair and walker-friendly path from our front door to the entrance of Northern Stage, and we designed a proper theater space within the building. For more mobile residents, it is easy to attend the theater across the street, and when mobility declines, there is the option to enjoy theater or music performances inside the building. Additionally, actors and playwrights from the theater often use our Miller Stage for readings of new works, showcases of work in development, and as a space for the youth ensemble to perform.
Miller Stage Entrance
These activities create a multi-generational shared experience with residents, family, and staff with young performers and their parents and grandparents. We strongly believe this experience positively impacts the lives of our residents as they have the opportunity to remain engaged with the wider cultural community. One of the most important things the arts offer us all is shared experience, reflective thought and an examination of the human condition – this is not age, cultural or economically exclusive.
Q: One of the most unique attributes of The Village is its location. What drove the decision to build on Main Street?
A: This is an interesting question. The simple answer is that my business
partner had owned the land for about 10 years and had considered a whole range of possible developments – offices, apartments, retail, a decked parking lot – and while some of these might have been reasonable uses for the land, Byron was never content with how any of them would contribute and be a driving force in the resurgence of the historic downtown core. When he came upon the idea of senior living we conducted significant field research and discovered nearly all regional AL & MC facilities were located out of town on a few acres of cheap land, consisting of stickbuilt one or two-story buildings on a ‘campus’ where the typical design was the entrance with lobby, administrative offices, dining room and a nondescript lounge clumped at the ‘belly’ with long halls of apartments leading off in two directions.
It was clear that developing the ‘typical’ model would not be possible on our one acre, oddly shaped, downtown site. This opened up the discussion of “we can’t be ‘that,’ so what can and should a senior living community be in this location?” It was an obvious follow-on for us to develop a list of the unique assets that our lot location could offer that the others never could. While we could not offer walking paths through a field, we could offer Main Street – and not just generic Main Street – but THIS Main Street of the historic and cultural district of this small New England town. The realization of our vision for The Village would never have been possible without the dynamic and robust creative relationship between us as the developers, our architect, and interior designer. Our architect, Lou Bieker of 4240 Architecture out of Denver, CO, started his design process with how to design for an infill site in a town that had been established over 100 years ago.
4240 Architecture Conceptual Design Rendering
Right from the outset, in conceptual design and design development, we collaboratively developed both the architecture space planning and program design. The idea of “context” drove every decision. We defined context to mean: the architectural style of surrounding buildings, the vernacular of materials across the micro-urban downtown core, the natural confluence of landscape (our site sits at the adjacency of a steep wooded hillside, a neighborhood of single-family homes and the urban core), the surrounding business – which are rich with arts and cultural organizations, and the lifestyle and type of human beings visiting, living, and working in the downtown and Upper Valley region.
The Upper Valley Region consists of two states – Vermont and New Hampshire, four counties, and 52 towns and is a cluster of communities as opposed to a single urban city. In our concept and design process it was equally important that the exterior construction materials included the brick and steel that characterizes the 100+ year old railroad town, and also that the flourishing visual and performing arts programming that exists on every side of the site would be celebrated, supported and reflected in our layout and design. To break it down more clearly – within two blocks of the lot, the following organizations exist: Northern Stage Theater, The Center for Cartoon Studies (the nation’s only accredited college and master’s degree program in cartoon and graphic novel), White River Independent Film Festival, Public Access television studios, The Briggs Opera House, The Main Street Museum of Art, Revolution (textile and fashion design), artisan cosmetic creators, two writers collectives with dozens of members, several mixed media arts studios, a pottery studio and over 30 visual arts workshops/studios/centers including Two River Printing, Northlight Photography, a Venetian mask maker, marble and granite sculptors and a wide range of visual artist.
We imagined, designed and built our community to mirror and engage in this extraordinary cultural hub by developing a ‘community within the community’ – large glazed openings allow connectivity from within and without the building; purpose built arts and culture spaces inside the building were designed to meet the standards of artists and artisans working professionally just steps away; outdoor terraces promote an inclusive, ‘porous’ atmosphere to blur the boundaries between interior and exterior – ideas designed to work in harmony and create a seamless community consisting of the world inside and outside the four walls of the building.
Q: I understand that there is a connection with the design that speaks to the history of this town, both from an interior and exterior perspective. Could you elaborate on that for us?
A: One of the unique attributes of New England is its connection with history. Therefore, it was important for us to consider the history as a major influence in the place-making of this community. It was important to us that the apartments were a ‘blank slate’ to most easily reflect the individual personalities and tastes of our residents – spaces they could really make their own. On the other hand, it was important that the shared amenity spaces each had a clear and individual personality.
The first step was to work with our architect, Lou Bieker, to determine the function and location of each space within the building. We chose to distribute the amenities throughout the building as opposed to the more traditional clumping at and adjacent to the main entry. This distribution allowed for the spaces to be more uniquely designed and to create a sense of ‘going somewhere’ to a special place for a specific activity. For example, a resident travels down to the street-front dining room and ‘goes out to town’ for breakfast, travels to the 3rd floor for an exercise class in the gym, and then can ‘go out to the movies’ on the 5th floor adjacent to the rooftop terrace. The distribution throughout the five floors also encourages residents to get up and get moving around the building which, is a priority within any assisted living or memory care community.
When the space function and distribution were set with the architect, we determined that unless each space was given a proper name it would always remain ‘5th floor lounge,’ which was too generic and lacked any kind of personality. I researched historic businesses and people from the 100+ year history of the town. By drawing on these ‘town forefathers,’ we were connecting both to the past and to the present. Smith & Sons 3rd floor community kitchen is named after a turn of the century bakery that was located a block away from The Village and was one of the earliest ‘mail order’ baked goods companies. Landmark Library is named after a printing press that published in a storefront across town. Wells Perch is our 4th floor rooftop dog park and named after Horace Wells who was the man who discovered the use of laughing gas for dentistry – and when would a resident be more likely to laugh than outside with their dog! Our Lyric Cinema has a design inspired by the Golden Age of Hollywood married with the town’s long-gone Lyric Theater, which many of our current residents remember having spent plenty of Friday nights in the theater’s balcony with their beau or belle. In some cases, we went as far as to use the original business logo for the signage at the entry of the room, as is the case with Smith & Son’s Kitchen.
There are over 25 distinct, purpose-built amenity spaces in the building – each with their own proper name. As I mentioned, our architect, Lou Bieker, took inspiration from the established materials of the historic, turn of the century railroad origins of the town, so the exterior includes steel I-beams reminiscent of the railroads themselves and brick specifically sourced to match the ‘bacon’ pattern of the surrounding buildings. The large windows of the amenity spaces, which stack on two prominent edges of the building, evoke railroad lanterns, offering a gentle and reassuring glow in the darker winter months.
Lou also was inspired by three iconic experiences typical of residential living in this region: Lantern, Front Porch, and Hearth. His interpretation of front porch can be seen in the positioning of the raised plinth of the resident Greenough Garden at the intersection of Currier and Gates Street, the set back of the building entry under the port cochere´ which has vertical Ipe wood that speaks to traditional tongue and groove ceilings on open air porches in this region. Each resident apartment door is inset off the hallways to give each apartment its own ‘front porch’ – which our interior designer, Denise Welch-May, dpf Design, took further by adding a traditional front door styled lighting fixture, wood planking distinguishing the entry from the carpeted hallways, and each floor has four different colored apartment doors so that a resident has a unique entry/front porch experience at their apartment. Interior design is tricky in senior living as the materials, fabrics, and furnishings have to live up to substantial use and cleaning, but Denise was able to work through her extensive high-end residential sources to both achieve the function required but to push the design and style far toward high-end, boutique hospitality choices.
Lillian’s Salon – Assisted Living 
Windsor Dining Room – Assisted Living
Wells Perch is our 4th floor rooftop dog park and named after Horace Wells who was the man who discovered the use of laughing gas for dentistry – and when would a resident be more likely to laugh than outside with their dog! Our Lyric Cinema has a design inspired by the Golden Age of Hollywood married with the town’s long-gone Lyric Theater, which many of our current residents remember having spent plenty of Friday nights in the theater’s balcony with their beau or belle. In some cases, we went as far as to use the original business logo for the signage at the entry of the room, as is the case with Smith & Son’s Kitchen. There are over 25 distinct, purpose-built amenity spaces in the building – each with their own proper name.
As I mentioned, our architect, Lou Bieker, took inspiration from the established materials of the historic, turn of the century railroad origins of the town, so the exterior includes steel I-beams reminiscent of the railroads themselves and brick specifically sourced to match the ‘bacon’ pattern of the surrounding buildings. The large windows of the amenity spaces, which stack on two prominent edges of the building, evoke railroad lanterns, offering a gentle and reassuring glow in the darker winter months. Lou also was inspired by three iconic experiences typical of residential living in this region: Lantern, Front Porch, and Hearth.
Polly’s Folly Conservatory
His interpretation of front porch can be seen in the positioning of the raised plinth of the resident Greenough Garden at the intersection of Currier and Gates Street, the set back of the building entry under the port cochere´ which has vertical Ipe wood that speaks to traditional tongue and groove ceilings on open air porches in this region. Each resident apartment door is inset off the hallways to give each apartment its own ‘front porch’ – which our interior designer, Denise Welch-May, dpf Design, took further by adding a traditional front door styled lighting fixture, wood planking distinguishing the entry from the carpeted hallways, and each floor has four different colored apartment doors so that a resident has a unique entry/front porch experience at their apartment. Interior design is tricky in senior living as the materials, fabrics, and furnishings have to live up to substantial use and cleaning, but Denise was able to work through her extensive high-end residential sources to both achieve the function required but to push the design and style far toward high-end, boutique hospitality choices.
Each resident apartment door is inset off the hallways to give each apartment its own ‘front porch’ – which our interior designer, Denise Welch-May, dpf Design, took further by adding a traditional front door styled lighting fixture, wood planking distinguishing the entry from the carpeted hallways, and each floor has four different colored apartment doors so that a resident has a unique entry/front porch experience at their apartment. Interior design is tricky in senior living as the materials, fabrics, and furnishings have to live up to substantial use and cleaning, but Denise was able to work through her extensive high-end residential sources to both achieve the function required but to push the design and style far toward high-end, boutique hospitality choices.
Q: You must be thrilled about learning that The Village at White River Junction won the 2019 Senior Housing News Architecture and Design Award. This is a beautiful and unique building. How were you able to convey your vision to the design team in order to achieve this astounding community?
A: We started with developing a list of all the things we couldn’t be and didn’t want to be. We focused on creating a vision of senior living that no matter what age, a person seeing the building from both the outside and the inside would exclaim, “Wow! I’d like to live here!” Perhaps from my background as a theater director, it is incumbent to (a) HAVE a vision and (b) be able to communicate that vision to the entire team so that the range of designers, consultants, contractors and operators are working from a common definition of what the team is tasked with building. In some cases, it is as simple as getting the team to call a certain space “Edson Bistro” instead of “the grab-n-go.” The best names evoke ideas and a sense of place which informs design. I think one of the most important elements of our role as developers was to hold the end vision. If we fail to communicate expectations and intents then the team has no basis other than past projects or “the way we usually do it,” and since we were striving for something altogether NOT the way it’s typically been done, it required us to have an acutely focused eye on all elements.
For example – we needed to pay attention that the vision was getting from us to the interior designer to the general contractor to make sure he was budgeting to support the vision and then to his plumbing subcontractor, who was ultimately doing the purchasing of many of the plumbing fixtures. As a development team Byron Hathorn and I have very complementary skill sets and backgrounds – he started his career as a builder, so he has the ability to really get underneath the plan sets, and he kept his eyes on making sure the interior spaces had a residential scale, and my background in the arts included years of working on studying ‘character,’ psychology and environment. This allowed me to envision who would actually be living in the building, how they would experience each of their days, and how we could deliver maximum functionality. I worked very closely with Denise, our interior designer, to create a balance between interior design selections that would be forward-looking and which would be more familiar.
Example: the dining room chair upholstery fabric for memory care is a more familiar nod to a 1940’s floral pattern, while the assisted living fabric in the ground level, street-front dining room is geometric and contemporary. The salon is the place where a resident who may have all sorts of emotions about growing old should feel beautiful, warm, and happy. It is named Lillian’s Salon after the silent movie star Lillian Gish who shot an iconic scene for the film WAY DOWN EAST on an ice flow in the White River. The colors are warm glowing peach with 1920’s influenced furnishings – complete with coffee table books featuring 1920’s glamour and Hollywood stars.
Q: Do you have a favorite space that has special meaning to you personally?
A: It seems each month I fall in love with a different space in the building! I am thrilled with the Miller Stage – named after the Miller Auto Company, whom we purchased the land from and which was the first Cadillac dealership in America. The room was very affordably designed to be a proper live performance chamber space. There is the warmth of golden oak and wood in both the floor and the seat-backs, and while the seats are 100% movable (non-fixed), they create the thrill of entering the performance space. A slightly raised stage sits at the outer edge of the building, and the floor to ceiling windows allow for the rolling hills of the valley to become the stage ‘backdrop,’ helping all the performances feel bigger and more expansive.
Miller Stage
Finally, the addition of theater-looking lights and the baby grand piano completes the experience. Additionally, there is an induction loop hearing system laid in the floor which connects by Bluetooth to residents’ hearing aids for individually supported sound enhancement. (Lyric Cinema also has this hearing support system) My second favorite space is Polly’s Folly, our 5th floor conservatory which is surrounded on three sides by windows and sits at the end of the long rectangular Teddy’s Pub. The interior designer selected Encaustic tiles, which are typically found in all the finest English country houses and cathedrals in Europe in a two-toned small-scale checkerboard pattern, creating a sense of grounded history and permanence that feels “of the earth.” One of my great personal passions is gardening and nearly every person in this region is a gardener at some level. We took the romance of indoor British green spaces and used both the words “folly” (built for decoration, whimsy) and “conservatory” – (not greenhouse or sun-room) as it is defined as primarily a living space with plants as opposed to an enclosed working gardening area. The space is further complemented by traditional teak rocking chairs and a unique antique center-hung lighting fixture. The completed space feels like a tropical flush green space, even in the dead of our long Vermont winter.
Q: Can you tell us how the common spaces such as Teddy’s Pub and Miller Stage were named?
A: I would like to point out that attention was given not just to finding interesting historical names – but we worked to match the function or occupation of the business or individual to the specific function of the room – Teddy’s Pub was a favorite restaurant and bar in the town until the mid-1970’s – the Lathan Gym was named after a garage for the repair of the steam train engines – in the gym we repair and strengthen the engine of our bodies. The Abbott Art Studio was named after the extraordinary photographer Collamer Abbott (1919-2012), who was born, raised and died in town.
Q: What is it that you hope your community offers prospective residents that they might not find elsewhere?
A: We offer residents A way of LIVING…not waiting. A lifestyle designed and supported to inspire the intangible elements of health – emotional, spiritual, intellectual, psychological. The concept, vision, and branding that we have created has interest and engagement that gives our residents a reason to want to get out of bed in the morning. Days where residents wake up and say, “Oh good! Today is the King Lear discussion on dementia, and then before dinner, the Artists-in-Residence Jakob Bribart and Jes Raymond (who are Americana musicians) will be playing during cocktail hour.” Or “Oh good! Today is the day the staff will help me walk across the street to have lunch with my girlfriends and see the play at Northern Stage Theater.” Daily living in our community is different because of our commitment to arts & culture – and that spans participation in the making of art, appreciation in the experiencing of art, and absorption of the creative world residents move through during their day.
On any given day, a resident walks by dozens of original artworks from regional artists, hears music coming from the artist-in-resident studio or a rehearsal in the Miller Stage, or joins a creative activity or field trip. These daily interactions with the arts create essential human experiences that make you think, make you feel, make you look – take you to faraway places, and are able to say things that words simply can’t, helping us realize that all humans are fundamentally the same.
Q: The other intriguing piece to all of this is your “Artists-in-Residence” program. Can you tell us how that came about and the impact it is having for the residents in The Village?
A: We set out to develop an arts and culturally rich community, but it was important that the arts and culture were not only scheduled activities on the daily calendar. It’s common in arts organizations to have an artist-in-residence, so it’s a model I’m quite familiar with, but it’s very uncommon in senior living communities. The idea of including an artist-in-residence space allocation and vision came directly from our broadest exploration of how our identity was shaped by the wider, existing community of the town. The richness of the local fabric is created by artists pursuing the making of their work by the performance and sharing of that work – but maybe most important is the positive friction and inspiration that may come simply from ordering your morning coffee next to another person. Words get exchanged, and ideas begin to percolate.
Artists-In-Residence Concert – Memory Care
The benefit of having artists-in-residence is that this third element of the positive friction and incubation of ideas is woven into the daily lives of our residents. Artists just look at the world a bit differently, so a casual conversation with a resident creates the opportunity where a resident thinks of something from a new direction or decides to head up to the Landmark Library to get a book on the topic they were discussing or head into the rest of their day with a smile from an exchange with a human being who isn’t staff or their family or another resident – someone who has decided, hey, this is a cool place to be.
Q: If you could share with others what you are most proud of from your experience in getting this project developed, what would it be?
A: Some days I am most proud that the darn thing just actually got built! But joking aside – I am most proud during moments I experience all the big ideas and vision we fought for coming together in the lives of our residents. A few weeks ago – I walked down the 3rd floor corridor to Smith & Sons Kitchen – heard Beatles music wafting down the hall and came around the corner to find eight women having an antipasto making party. It was a resident and her best girlfriends having a dinner party – one mixed a salad in a hand-turned VT wood bowl (that I fought hard to convince people was important), another one was taking fresh French bread out of the oven made from local King Arthur Flour, a few were dancing around the setting of the large farmhouse style dining table, while local artist Gaal Shepard’s oil painting of a VT summer field hung on the opposite wall, the windows overlook the street corner and the coming and goings of evening shoppers. There is an induction cook-top – so no worries about anyone getting a burn, the cooking island is Vermont Danby Marble, and the sitting island is wood kiln dried from a tree felled on the property. I said hello to the group, and like young college coeds, they worried that they were playing their music too loud – and one laughed as they snuck a dessert cookie while another exclaimed – “This kitchen is great! We didn’t have to bring one thing from home for this dinner party with our friend who lives here!” And in one room our entire vision of the lifestyle we wanted to create was realized.
