$15.5 million parcel near Oakmont likely to be used for assisted living

A local developer of senior communities has spent $15.5 million on a piece of land near Oakmont as part of his effort to resurrect a project Japanese investors abandoned in the 1990s.

Bill Gallaher, who built more than 440 homes in Oakmont, is behind a newly formed company that purchased the 60-acre parcel on Highway 12, west of the 5,000-home senior community.

Gallaher plans to build a senior housing facility similar to the project that was proposed for the site in the 1990s by Pacific LifeCare Corp., which gained approval for a 460-unit senior community that included a skilled nursing facility.

The Japanese backers of that project pulled out in 1997, and the project has languished ever since.

"They bought a great piece of land. They just couldn't execute the plan," explained Dave McKenney, who represented the Japan Senior Citizen Welfare Organization, the nonprofit company that owned the property located around Elnoka Lane.

A second Japanese company, Kou-You Co., owns an adjacent seven-acre parcel that is going on the market soon, said McKenney, of the Los Angeles-based real estate firm McKenney and Associates.

The decision to sell was made two years ago when new management at Japan Senior Citizen Welfare Organization, which runs numerous assisted living centers in Japan, decided the property was "surplus assets," he said.

The property went on the market last fall and about 11 investors bid on the land. Gallaher's company was chosen largely because of its ability to close the deal quickly, explained Jeffrey Breithaupt, the attorney for the firm.

"Their main concern was being able to sell it by a certain date, and we could satisfy that," Breithaupt said. "That was a big concern, because of their accounting in Japan, something was going and it had to be a fairly quick deal."

The company that purchased the property is a partnership between Gallaher, under the name Oakmont Senior Living LLC, and a handful of other private investors, he said. Oakmont Senior Living LLC owns 85 percent of the venture, he said.

The investors have named their project Two Bridges and a Box Culvert LLC, a lighthearted play on the name of the previous project, Three Bridges. The new name was borne when an engineer for Gallaher was surveying the property recently.

"He looked at one of the three bridges and said 'That bridge is more like a box culvert,'" Gallaher recalled.

A more suitable name for the project will be chosen at a later date, Gallaher said.

One of the attractions of the property for Gallaher was the fact that Pacific LifeCare Corp. had obtained all the necessary permits for the project before financing fell through.

While those permits have since expired, Gallaher believes the demand for such a facility and the prior approvals will make regulatory hurdles fairly easy to clear.

Even if everything goes smoothly, Gallaher said he thinks it will be at least five years before anyone is ready to move in. Other details, such as the exact number of units and mix of care provided, have yet to be decided, he said.

In general, however, the project likely would be a mixture of apartments and town homes that senior citizens who live in Oakmont, for example, would move to when they needed a higher level of care.

"When you're right next door, it's really like you're not moving out of the community at all," Gallaher said.

The previous project included a 99-bed skilled nursing facility, but Gallaher said he's not sure whether his project would contain that element. Alzheimer's and dementia care also would likely be part of the services offered.

Gallaher's largest company, Aegis Assisted Living, is currently planning a luxurious 240-unit senior retirement complex called Varenna planned for 29 acres at the top of Fountaingrove. That project is before the Planning Commission and is being closely watched because of its potential visual impact on the surrounding area.

All told, Gallaher owns or controls companies that operate more than 35 senior residential communities throughout the Western United States.

He is also chairman of First Community Bank, which he helped found last year, and part owner of the Fountaingrove Golf & Athletic Club.