Jill Schroeder, CID, senior planner, Pope Design Group (St. Paul, Minn.)
Jill Schroeder has dedicated her career to senior living design, driven by a passion for improving environments for aging that sets the bar and the tone for her workplace of Pope Design Group. She’s a national leader in promoting the creation of homelike environments and speaks frequently on topics including how to design for resident wellness and quality of life.
Although a certified interior designer, she shifted gears years ago to become a planner who now digs into the intricacies of operations, as well, to help owners/operators achieve more effective and efficient environments. Schroeder has contributed to several award-winning projects, a recent example being WesleyLife Cottages at Hearthstone in Johnston, Iowa.
There, she helped guide the project that delivers numerous wellness opportunities to residents in an environment reminiscent of high-end communities but at an affordable price point for its Midwest location.
Schroeder has offered her expertise to the industry at large recently, too, serving on the Health Guidelines Revision Committee of the Facility Guidelines Institute (FGI) for the 2022 guidelines revision cycle (and is on board for 2026) as well as vice-chair of the Residential Health Subcommittee for FGI’s “Guidance for Designing Health and Residential Care Facilities that Respond and Adapt to Emergency Conditions” whitepaper.
Each represents an effort to contribute to the safety and well-being of senior living residents. And in her ongoing efforts to ensure residents are secure, Schroeder specifically focuses on the resident bathroom to identify effective yet practical solutions, like zero threshold environments, and even works directly with manufacturers to innovate new offerings.
Here, Schroeder shares insight on her career and the industry in a Q+A with Environments for Aging in recognition of being named one of the magazine’s 2022 EFA Design Champions.
EFA: You’ve spent 27 years dedicated to the design of senior living environments. What’s kept you engaged and passionate over the years?
Jill Schroeder: Alzheimer’s runs in my family, with most relatives developing the disease around my age. To be honest, this scares me to death. I’m scared of what I could be like if I, too, develop Alzheimer’s or any other form of dementia and what person I’ll be when my cognitive abilities begin to diminish. When someone develops Alzheimer’s, memories deeply rooted in their subconscious, often from childhood, come to surface. During my own childhood, I experienced a lot of trauma, and I worry about how that will affect me.
These thoughts have shaped my passion and approach to the design of senior facilities, particularly memory care.
I approach senior living design from this perspective: How can the environment keep residents feeling safe and comfortable? How do I ignite fun memories instead of traumatic ones, and what kind of spaces can I create to do that? I’m deeply motivated by my past trauma and try to envision things that are artistic and energizing out of those dark spaces. Without the darkness, we aren’t as likely to appreciate the light, right?
What has your shift from interior designer to planner allowed you to do in terms of further informing where you take projects?
It was about 20 years ago as an interior designer that I started to question why certain adjacencies were occurring: “Why is this room over here and that room over there? This one should be closer to that one, and this other one will almost always be empty so why’s it included to begin with?”
I began watching how people moved within spaces—residents and staff—and sort of predicting human behavior in relation to the layout and flow of a room or cluster of spaces. I started to let go of the finishes in a space and began looking at it architecturally in terms of realistic uses and flows. How would the sunlight at various times of day hit this room and what would it reflect against? If I or a loved one were to navigate this space or area, how might we do it? What configurations could make resident and staff life easier?
I also consider how to make every dollar count and reduce incidents where money would be wasted. Your perspective changes a bit when you design from the perspective of making a community cost-effective—what are they able to spend and how can I make it as beautiful and functional as possible within their budget?
Big-picture thinking like shifting and repositioning or getting deeper into the overall planning of space adjacencies and configurations all the way to more subtle details like traffic flow, sight lines, and visual anchors can make a tremendous difference.
This approach helps me thoughtfully and sensibly improve resident and staff lives in a way that makes sense for the people who are going to be using the spaces every day. I really thought I would miss interior design, but I don’t. Planning is so invigorating and woven into every fiber of my being.
What inspired you to work with FGI on the new residential guidelines?
My interest originated around the definition of a household kitchen, as I sometimes found it hard to design these kitchens with a truly residential aesthetic when considering equipment needs and logistics of staff use and safety for all. From the very first meetings with the FGI revision team, I dove into it all.
Clarifications in language that needed updating to be current with how we design today became a big effort (i.e., handrails in common areas and corridors). Addressing needs specific to hospice care or chronic pain management was needed, as well.
Being involved in FGI, alongside industry rockstars, is invigorating. Everyone on the revision teams is as passionate and excited as I am about code language and modifying anything that needs attention to help bring these spaces to the next level of independent and realistic care for those impacted by codes and regulations.
Where do you think the industry’s codes need further evaluation to support the evolving senior living design landscape?
Many in the senior housing industry have been wanting to change the ADA guidelines surrounding bathroom grab bars for fall risks; there’s conflicting requirements depending on your state requirements or even the way you’re financing a project will direct you to follow a certain code or guideline, and it drives us crazy. It needs to make sense toward what the actual physical mobility challenges are for seniors.
The ADA bathroom grab bar requirements were established around the needs of somewhat average-aged male having physical limitations on his lower body but having adequate upper body strength to hold his full body weight up in transfers or pivoting. Research could suggest that folding grab bars flanking the toilet area might be a better solution than the ADA-required L-shaped configuration, and I find that many of our operators prefer the fold-down design.
Also, food! Every year we have new thoughts on food service and delivery. We care about our morning coffee and what’ll be served for dinner, plain and simple. Most of our assisted living households in the state of Minnesota desire a household kitchen to appear a bit more residential.
In the Minnesota food code, our kitchen cabinets need to be custom fabricated plastic laminate on both the interior and exterior if there is to be any cooking happening—a surface that’s very difficult to look residential.
And some city licensing codes prevent bar service to happen unless in a room (sometimes needing to have doors) with posted signage identifying age restrictions—in a senior community! I think we all want the ability when we are 85 years old to sit down with our breakfast and sip on a bloody mary in a space that stays open without needing a sign that reads “Must Be 21 To Enter.”
Tells us about your contribution to the FGI emergency conditions whitepaper and how the document will help guide the industry going forward.
The effort was needed because of the ongoing global pandemic, with data pouring in from every corner of the world. We, as active professionals meeting on a regular basis to revise the FGI guidelines, felt that we had to do due diligence to collect this data, organizing all our findings into a useful, digestible, and practical guideline of where and how to respond. Deaths were rapidly occurring throughout each senior living community, and all responses had to be reactive at the time, because there was no clearly defined protocol like we’d have with a natural disaster.
FGI broke the huge effort down into categories of emergency conditions such as civil unrest, flooding, wildfires, and, of course, pandemics. Our teams then developed the in-depth, comprehensive whitepaper offering guidelines on facility procedures that reflect what’s been working and what hasn’t across campuses that have established response protocols.
I live and work in the Twin Cities, and as I started to interview and collect real-time data from the operators in this area, George Floyd was murdered in downtown Minneapolis. His death had an immediate civil reaction of rioting and protests during a complete shutdown due to pandemic restrictions.
One of my client communities is in the heart of where that civil unrest took place. As frightening as it was for the residents who live there, I was able to take what was experienced from this and apply it to our full knowledge of what works/what doesn’t/what can improve as part of the whitepaper research.
It was an honor to be part of the team and process putting this together; I learned so much throughout each step of it. It’s another example of different people coming together in one area to accomplish something we all deeply care about. It will help guide the industry going forward by setting new expectations—for example, rethinking Point A entry to Point B exit. It’s a soft design approach that makes us think about how we can proactively plan for a worst-case scenario without causing undue panic for those around us.
You’re credited with having an innate ability to create spaces that feel like home and not a facility. What are some of those finer details you’ve found make all the difference?
Plan for cozy details such as space in a cabinet for a hidden blanket warmer near the seating in a fireplace lounge. Always use three different sources of light in any space, with at least one of them dimmable. I advocate for as much daylighting as possible, with sight lines from any common area to a view of nature. And don’t forget acoustics! Think about how sound will travel and conversations can be audibly heard by those with or without hearing aids.
We all approach projects wanting to create communities that feel like home. The difference is everyone has a different idea of what “home” feels like to them. What will that community reflect? A lifelong farmer may be drawn to a space that feels like what they grew up in; they should walk into a room and think, “Ah, I don’t have to take off my boots and I can actually touch the upholstery!” Lifelong urbanites may appreciate more modern lighting touches, clean lines, and fine art on the walls. So many firms take the approach of wanting to grace consumer magazine covers, but popular in-fashion aesthetics may not fit each community and the residents they serve.
Where is there opportunity to innovate more in senior living?
Innovation can be designing/building/doing something that isn’t “proven.” And right now, innovation is needed in planning on how we size senior living units for marketability. It’s always been the case that residents want more and more square footage as they transition from their home to live within a community.
Many of the operators I work in the Midwest with have a high demand for as much square footage as possible—units with over 1,200 square feet will be filled immediately, leaving anything smaller to be available for some time. I’d like to explore how a significant reduction in the size of kitchen appliances and cabinetry can grow the square footage of the living room space.
These changes might be more expensive as a first cost, but the space added to the living area could enhance the apartment’s desirability. Construction costs are rising yet rent rates still need to be attainable to the typical ready-to-move-in-senior.
Innovation can also be new products that will directly contribute to a better quality of life for seniors. The household kitchen may feature the cooking as almost a “demonstration kitchen” design; however, required ventilation hoods and the housing surrounding those hoods currently make achieving a residential aesthetic nearly impossible.
In a recently completed community in Iowa, we struggled to bring the cooking area to the center island while still maintaining a high-volume ceiling. A custom designed hood surround ended up in the solution to make it possible. Innovation involving all appliances or cooking apparatuses is a huge need for us as designers.
