By Alyssa Schnugg
News editor
alyssa.schnugg@hottytoddy.com
The Oxford Planning Commission approved the site plan for a new senior living complex off South Lamar Road that will offer a range of care – from those still independent up to those who require full-skilled nursing care.
Oxford Farms Senior Living will sit on 4.6 acres of land on the west side of South Lamar and south of the Oxford Pediatric Group.
The complex will be an 86-unit, three-story assisted living facility with a total of 108 bedrooms. Access will be on South Lamar and Farmview Road.
Commissioners considered, and approved, several variances and a special exception for the facility including a variance from the parking ordinance.
The Land Development Code, as it is now, would only allow the facility to provide a total of 32 parking stalls – five for the anticipated 10 employees and 27 stalls for visitors of the 108 bedrooms.
Oxford Farms Senior Living developers were requesting 98 parking spaces to allow for each tenant to have one parking space and 12 spaces for employees and visitors.
City Planner Ben Requet told commissioners that the Land Development Code only considers a type of an assisted living facility that offers full-skilled care to residents who often no longer drive and fails to consider a facility that provides care to a range of residents, including people who are fully independent or whose physical limitations does not impair their ability to drive.
“Staff plans to modify the Land Development Code to incorporate parking standards for a range of assisted living facilities,” he said Monday.
Requet credited the efforts of the Retiree Attraction Program through the Oxford-Lafayette Chamber of Commerce to showcase Oxford as a desirable location to retire which has created a need for more senior living developments.
“As the baby-boomer generation continues to age, Oxford and Lafayette County need to ensure that there is adequate infrastructure in place to allow this segment of the population to age in place,” he told the commission Monday. “Additionally, as Oxford continues becoming a regional healthcare hub, it is likely that the Planning Commission will review more requests for age-restricted developments, assisted living facilities, nursing homes and memory care facilities.”
The site plan also indicates a future phase that will offer a memory care facility in the future.
