‘win-win-win’: Lcs, Vi Execute Planned Merger, Creating 130-community Company

The combination of LCS and Vi into one company is complete.

With the acquisition of Vi, LCS now manages 130 communities in 29 states. All told, the company employs 27,000 people who help support 45,000 residents.

With the merger, Vi is moving forward as a luxury brand within Des Moines, Iowa-based LCS’ family of companies. Vi President and CEO Gary Smith will continue to lead the operator and its 10 high-end life plan communities from Chicago and report to LCS CEO Chris Bird.

By bringing Vi into LCS, the company is making good on a long-term strategy to grow its business after its 2022 recapitalization with Redwood Capital Investments. According to Bird, LCS seeks to own and operate high-quality, Class A life plan communities with good resident values and services that impart high satisfaction. The addition of Vi meshes perfectly with that mission, he told Senior Housing News.

“It fits squarely into everything that we think about and do,” Bird said. “Gary’s team has a development pipeline of some sites that we want to look at and it will fold in really well with … the development side of our business.”

While LCS has acquired plenty of communities in one-off opportunities, the acquisition of Vi represented a “rare” opportunity to acquire a portfolio of high-quality life plan communities such as the ones Vi operates, Bird said. Both Vi and LCS’ life plan communities operate at above 90% average occupancy rates and both companies “want to be the best at everything we can do.”

“We’re one of the best owners and operators of life plan communities. This just adds to it,” Bird said.

He added: “We’re being purposeful and thoughtful to how we integrate businesses over the course of, probably, the next two years.”

From his viewpoint leading Vi, Smith told SHN that he believes the combination of the two companies will help the operator realize senior living’s incoming “golden age.” Vi has since the darkest days of the Covid pandemic added occupancy for 19 straight quarters and recovered its pre-pandemic margins.

The baby boomer generation is perched at the senior living industry’s doorstep and will continue to move into senior living properties in the next decade. As such, strong senior living operators are now in demand among investors, lenders and owners of communities.

“We’ve both been both owners and operators, and we are focused on what matters: the resident experience, employee satisfaction, your reputation and learning from mistakes in the past,” Smith told SHN. “We are really well-positioned as the opportunities in our industry take off.”

Building a better operator together

Both LCS and Vi are bringing something to the table with the combination of the companies.

LCS has a slate of back-office support systems to plug into the Vi operational engine. For example, LCS is readying its human resources information system (HRIS) and data analytics suite to deploy within Vi’s portfolio next year. The company also owns a group purchasing organization (GPO) that will help save as much as 10% to 12% of general expenses within Vi’s communities – money that it can then redeploy to further improve its processes, Bird said.

Meanwhile, LCS is taking cues from Vi’s reputation for wellness programming. A few years ago, Vi leaders studied the baby boomers’ wants, needs and preferences and used that information to inform wellness and lifestyle efforts for its residents under its Living Well slate of services that encompass mind, body and spirit.

That culminated in the launch of Vista 360 Well-Being, a framework that aims to give residents more agency and help them live well on their own terms. Through strategic pillars of “empower, elevate and enliven,” Vi seeks to help residents personalize how they spend their time in ways meaningful to them, foster growth and discovery through amenities and programming and cultivate connections and belonging among them.

Other wellness-oriented initiatives that Vi can bring to its new larger family of companies include brain health programs for cognitive wellbeing and opportunities for residents to travel domestically to other communities or even internationally.

“The research shows resident interest in wellness, and … it’s not just a fancy fitness studio. You have to address their health, their mental fitness, their mental and spiritual wellness, as well. So, that’s something we’re excited about investing in,” Bird said.

All the while, LCS is continuing to build up the data science and AI journey it began a few years prior. LCS now has five staffers in its data science group, including a newly hired dedicated employee to research how the company can use AI to do things like boost the time community staffers spend with residents and help manage a workforce “that just won’t exist in the future at the same levels we have today,” Bird said.

“We have to make it easier for our executive directors and community employees to do the job, and that’s where understanding AI and its capabilities, and partnering with other technology firms, is going to help us,” he added.

Vi, LCS combination the right deal at the right time

Vi and LCS came together at the right time for both.

In recent years, Vi had explored a recapitalization. It had long worked with CS Capital Advisors, and last year, an opportunity arose to potentially change the company’s ownership through a sale.

Separately, Bird said that LCS had eyed the Vi portfolio of communities, and recalled that he had asked CS Capital Advisors to let him know first if the portfolio ever came up for sale. In early 2025, he got the call that it was.

“It was a quick yes,” he said.

Smith borrowed the words of The Office’s Michael Scott by describing the deal to join forces with LCS as a “win-win-win.”

“We wanted a win for our owners, we wanted a win for our residents, we wanted a win for our team members and leaders,” Smith said. “We just couldn’t imagine a better partner.”

Bird sees the combination of LCS and Vi as a culmination of his last three decades working in senior living. Specifically senior living companies like LCS have pivoted from being “reactive” to “proactive.”

“We’re going to be able to be a much better provider of services, hospitality, health and wellness for all of our residents in the future with our combined organizations,” Bird said.

Smith said that while members of the Greatest Generation adapted to senior living, the baby boomers will expect senior living operators to adapt to them. That necessitates constant evolution and growth – exactly what joining the LCS family will bring, he added.

“We’re excited to be there for this new customer that’s coming in, and being able to provide what they’re most interested in,” Smith said.

The post ‘Win-Win-Win’: LCS, Vi Execute Planned Merger, Creating 130-Community Company appeared first on Senior Housing News.