Assisted living continues to grow in Conn.

In commencing construction this summer of a new senior community, developer Rizzo Corp. is delivering a couple of bonuses to its home town of Danbury.

They include an ambulance station for the city’s west side which has lacked one; and additional clearance for pilots landing at the small airport nearby.

For an affluent segment of the city’s population, however, the new Keystone Place at Wooster Heights offers something more important yet — a place to “age in place” near where they made their homes and have family today, as the demands of home ownership become too much in their later years.

Keystone Place at Wooster Heights becomes the latest development to offer assistedliving apartments in southwestern Connecticut, including more than 20 units of 140 total for people afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease who require ongoing monitoring and care.

Even as home nursing care services have proliferated in Connecticut, assisted living remains a boom segment for those with the savings to foot the bill, with the Connecticut Office of Health Strategy listing nearly 140 assisted living communities statewide as of 2018.

As of June, occupancies averaged 90.6 percent in the Northeast, according to the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, the highest of any region nationally though representing a slight decline from three months earlier.

Westportbased Maplewood Senior Living has been the most active developer of assisted living centers in the southwest corner of the state, commemorating last week its new Maplewood Southport community while contemplating another in Norwalk. Sunrise Senior Living is in the process of completing a new community in Wilton, with Columbia Pacific Advisors recently winning approval for a site in Brookfield.

The ongoing construction may be helping to keep rates in check, which in southwestern Connecticut average $71,000 a year as estimated in an annual study by Genworth.

Rizzo Corp. CEO Anthony Rizzo Jr. said Keystone Place at Wooster Heights has been in the works for nearly four years, with the Danbury community the second to be managed by Keystone after the Keystone Place at Newbury Brook center in Torrington. Waterburybased Webster Financial is financing the construction of Keystone Place at Wooster Heights.

Keystone Place at Wooster Heights will include 55 apartments for older people who do not require any living assistance — half of them have already been reserved — as well as 63 units for those with varying assistance needs, and 22 apartments for people living with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia who require ongoing monitoring and care.

The community will include a library, theater, pub, ice cream parlor, salon and activity rooms.

Keystone Place at Wooster Heights residents will benefit as well from the quickest possible response time for any emergencies requiring transport to Danbury Hospital. Rizzo Corp. is building on its own dime a new ambulance station at the community to service the city’s west side, with the neighborhood lacking any such facility at present.

“This is a big deal — it provides quicker (emergency) response times on this side of the city, which is growing and changing and developing in a very positive way,’” said Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, speaking Thursday at a groundbreaking ceremony as construction crews worked on the facility’s foundation. “We need this.”

The Keystone Place at Wooster Heights approval process extended to the Federal Aviation Administration, given the community’s perch overlooking Danbury Municipal Airport. Rizzo Corp. lowered the profile of the threestory structure and cleared trees across Wooster Heights Road to create an unimpeded sight line for pilots to line up their final approach to the runway.

“As a ... private pilot, I can’t be more pleased with that new approach,” said Mark Omasta, assistant chief of the Danbury Fire Department. “When we come in for landings, ... you can actually see the runway now.”

Includes prior reporting by Jordan Grice, Julia Perkins and Rob Ryser. Alex.Soule@scni.com; 2038422545; @casoulman

Alexander Soule / Hearst Connecticut Media Mayor Mark Boughton, center, leads a groundbreaking ceremony for the planned Keystone Place at Wooster Heights in Danbury with the Rizzo Corp. development to offer apartments for independent living, as well as those requiring assistive care including for Alzheimer’s disease.