Transforming Age Still Expanding After Four Big Years

“We want to change the world. We want to continue to make a huge impact,” Hirche told Senior Housing News.

Transforming Age—formerly known as Presbyterian Retirement Communities Northwest—is a not-for-profit network of services, products and partnerships dedicated to enhancing the lives of older adults. Its efforts span a wide variety of offerings that include senior housing, home and community-based care, technology, philanthropy and business services.

The organization currently serves more than 5,000 seniors, roughly 40% of whom live in one of the organization’s 16 senior housing properties in Washington, Minnesota and Nebraska. Those properties run the gamut from affordable and age-restricted housing to independent living, assisted living, memory care and continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs).

But Transforming Age wasn’t always a wide-ranging, multi-state operation. In 2014, the year Hirche came aboard, the organization had just three communities in its portfolio and only cared for about 600 seniors.

Transformative period

One big part of the nonprofit’s mission is growth. Hirche, a former vice president of operations for non-profit CCRC developer and provider Pacific Retirement Services (PRS), knows a thing or two about growing in forward-thinking ways. He helped open two of PRS’ upscale Mirabella communities in Seattle and Portland, Oregon.

“The goal is to expand the mission and expand the impact we make,” Hirche said. “In order to do that, [Transforming Age] couldn’t stay at the size we were.”

Last January, Transforming Age announced the purchase of eight rental retirement communities in the Minneapolis, Minnesota, area, for $138 million. The acquisition marked the first time the nonprofit ventured outside the state of Washington since its founding nearly 60 years ago, and made it the 48th largest senior living nonprofit by total units in the U.S., according to the 2017 LeadingAge Ziegler 150.”