A Home with Heart: Legacy Living Defiance Creates Meaningful Senior Living Complex

Keeping a sense of home and community is something everyone wants for their loved ones as they get older.

Legacy Living Defiance, a new retirement and assisted living facility, is working to create such an atmosphere at its location on Latchaw Drive in Defiance.

“Our culture is truly different,” stated Iyan Pelfree, leasing director of Legacy Living. He emphasized that individuals with Legacy Living take into account the culture of families and communities while working to create “a meaningful quality of life” for all residents. 

“It’s like a big high school reunion (here),” he said, adding that residents can go to the pub at the facility and play cards, smile and laugh; enjoy casual and fine dining on site and more.

The close-knit community of Defiance County is what initially brought Defiance to the attention of the owners and organizers of Legacy Living.

“Ross Oberhausen, our owner, he’s been in the senior living game for a long time,” Paige Green, executive director of Legacy Living Defiance, explained. “He knew it was a tight-knit community here, and there was an urgent need for (senior living facilities). He did more research and reached out to Tony Schantz (of Legacy Living) and brought him up here. Tony knew within 10 minutes that this was a place to build.”

Pelfree called the Legacy Living project “unique.” When completed, Legacy Living Defiance will have 36 two-bedroom patio homes, 24 one-bedroom patio homes, 65 assisted living suites and

29 memory care units.  In total, the project will have 154 homes/units when finished. Work on several of the sixplex units (which include the two- and one-bedroom patio homes) already are completed. 

The project will offer independent living, assisted living, memory care, respite care and a senior social program.  In addition, Legacy Living will provide casual and fine dining daily, opportunity for social engagements, complimentary local scheduled transportation, exercise programs and more.  In addition, it is pet friendly. 

The independent living area (the one- and two-bedroom patio homes) features a ground-level, fully-functioning condo. It includes all appliances, an attached garage, front porch and back patio. 

All independent living condos are maintenance-free, which means someone else takes care of interior and exterior maintenance such as lawn care, snow removal and trash disposal. 

The assisted living area, which will be located in the main building, will have licensed nursing staff around the clock. 

The Legacy Living team will meet with the individual and their family to assess a resident’s needs and then develop a plan that fosters to them. Some of the needs that can be addressed includes medication administration, diabetes management, toileting and incontinence care, dressing, bathing, transfer and ambulance assistance, oxygen maintenance, mental health monitoring and more. 

For those who experience memory loss or cognitive decline, Legacy Living has a special memory care neighborhood. 

Pelfree stressed that a lot of prospective residents and their families have been very complimentary about the facility having secure memory care until.

“Having secure memory care is a big deal,” he acknowledged, adding families see the “importance of that being in Defiance County.”

Individuals with Legacy Living will create a person-service plan for each individual in the memory care unit. Legacy Living uses Teepa Snow’s philosophy which utilizes a series of simple “hand-under-hand” techniques to offer comfort and initiate activity for those suffering from memory loss. The goal is to give the individual with memory loss a greater sense of participation in their own lives.  Legacy Living also has an integrated hobby space to help provide engagement for all skill sets and interests. 

“Teepa is as close as you can get to an expert in the field of dementia,” Green pointed out.  Green stated staff will be trained on the hand-under-hand technique which has individuals coming around to face those suffering with dementia to guide their hands to objects such as glasses. It will then be up to the person to decide to pick it up or not. 

Snow’s philosophy realizes that people can be at different stages of dementia throughout the day. Staff will adjust cases and act based on what the resident’s status is at that time.

Staff at Legacy Living Defiance also want everyone to know that they are a pet-friendly facility. 

Pelfree emphasized that being able to bring their pets with them is “very important” for residents. 

“It's an amazing support system for them,” he stressed, adding that a small dog park will be part of the facility as well. The dog park will allow pet owners not only to exercise their dogs, but also meet and talk to other pet owners. 

In addition to having a community atmosphere for residents, staff at Legacy Living want everyone to know they want to focus on being part of the overall community as well. 

“We know this is their (residents’) home and we want to contribute (to the community),” said Green. “We just want to be involved as much as we can.”

Supporting area students is part of that involvement. 

“We support not only high school athletes but do sponsorships,” Pelfree stressed. “We just really want to be involved in the community as much as possible. It’s very important,” 

For more information on Legacy Living Defiance, call 419-785-6308 or visitdefianceseniorliving.com.