Roanoke, VA-based Retirement Unlimited Inc. will celebrate its 40th anniversary this year with record growth, after doubling the number of senior living communities it manages this past year, with properties added in Virginia, and now, Florida.
Working with a venture capital partner, the family-owned business assumed management of its first two communities in Florida on July 1, 2021. RUI assumed management of seven additional Florida communities last month, expanding the company’s community portfolio from seven properties in 2021 to 19 today. Nine of those communities are in Florida, and 10 in Virginia, with an additional Virginia community in development.
“Our mission is easy,” RUI President Doris-Ellie Sullivan told the McKnight’s Business Daily. “It’s to provide the residents with a lifestyle that they’ve both earned and deserve, and to create purposeful living. I think that’s the secret to everything we do.”
RUI is operated by the second generations of the Fralin and Waldron families, with a third generation of Fralins also sitting on the board, she said.
“I think the key to success in our company is that we listen a lot to our team members. With our 22% turnover rate, I think that shows that,” said Sullivan, who has worked for RUI since 2016, when the company managed six properties.
“I think when you have great team members, they take great care of our residents,” she added.
To recruit new employees, Sullivan said, each of the properties holds weekly walk-in interviews and tries to recruit workers on the spot. Each community chooses the day of the week that works best for it for the open interviews.
“I think one of our ‘secret sauces’ is that we let our communities have those initiatives within the community that they serve,” Sullivan said. “I think empowering our executive directors and our local department manager to be able to facilitate those offers, I think helps.”
Moving forward in 2022, Retirement Unlimited has plans to expand its management operations further in the Southeast.
“We’re consulting a Southeast regional operator, and we’re working with some capital and equity partners,” Sullivan said.
RUI will celebrate its 40-year anniversary at the end of the year with a gala to commemorate the opening of its first community, The Barrington at Hioaks in Richmond, in 1982. Sullivan said the event will be a “great testament” to founder Heywood Fralin, chairman of the board.
“I think it’s going to be a great testimony to our industry in general that the Waldron and Fralin families are committed,” she added. “They have great integrity. That is one of our core values.”
