INNOVATORS Gold Award - New Orleans City Business

INNOVATOR
Schonberg and Associates
Key innovation: senior care facilities with holistic,
age-in-place design
Where they’re based: New Orleans
Top executive: David Schonberg, owner and managing
partner
Year introduced: 2001
2007 sales: $11.5 million
WHEN DAVID SCHONBERG got into the business of
building and operating assisted-living facilities, he was determined
to provide more than just housing and a competent
medical staff. The patients’ emotional well-being would be
just as important.
“I took it from an institutional and medical approach to
taking care of our seniors to a behavioral approach,” said
Schonberg, who spent many years as a nursing home
administrator in Texas before starting his own company in
New Orleans. “You put somebody in a better, cleaner, quieter
environment and you’re going to get better results.”
The color, lighting and even the sound in Schonberg’s
facilities are designed to create an atmosphere that enhances
the residents’ sense of calm and security.
“It cuts down on confusion and agitation,” Schonberg
said.
A major turning point for Schonberg came when he
returned to New Orleans from Texas after several years of
working for Advanced Care Centers of America and delved
into a new career area.
“I moved home and started doing some real estate projects
— redevelopment of neighborhoods, condominium
developments and things of that sort,” he said. “I thought it
was a natural to take my real estate background, coupled
with my health care background, and build my first assisted
living facility/memory care facility.”
Schonberg’s first facility, the Suites at Sugar Mill Point in
Houma, was constructed in 2002. He later built another
senior community in Hattiesburg, Miss., and acquired three
existing facilities in South Carolina.
All of Schonberg and Associates’ senior-care facilities
employ an age-in-place model, providing a continuum of
care that makes life easier for patients and their families,
said Kathy McPhail, manager of Alden Pointe Assisted
Living in Hattiesburg.
“It’s difficult enough to move Mom or Dad into a facility.
It’s even more difficult when we have to say (the needs
of) Mom and Dad exceed the scope of what we’re about,”
McPhail said. “With the age-in-place philosophy, if they
bring Mom in and she’s on level one, we have different
levels of care, so she can age in place … all the way ’til the
end.”
After working out of his home for years, Schonberg
recently set up a corporate headquarters on South Claiborne
Avenue. Looking ahead, the company is considering
expanding its Louisiana operations into Thibodaux and St.
Charles Parish.
“Now that I’ve kind of got my critical mass, I’m coming
home to start growing,” Schonberg said.•
— Sonya Stinson
PHOTO BY FRANK AYMAMI
From left: David Schonberg, Stuart Coleman and Cheryl Golich review plans for an assisted living center.
New Orleans CityBusiness 31A