Global investment firm Investcorp looks to buy Yaphank assisted living facility for $34 million

A global investment firm is looking to buy a Yaphank assisted living and memory care facility for $34 million — with the help of tax breaks — as demand for assisted living rises.

A subsidiary of Investcorp is in the process of buying The Chelsea at Brookhaven from Dallas-based MedCore Partners, according to documents filed with the Brookhaven Industrial Development Agency. MedCore currently receives tax breaks on the 1 Meadows Lane facility through the IDA, and Investcorp requested it take over that deal.

If the sale closes, Investcorp will benefit from thousands of dollars in continued tax breaks scheduled to run until 2031, according to the Brookhaven IDA's 2025 annual report.

The sale is not final, a representative for Medcore Partners told Newsday. Investcorp declined to comment.

If the sale does go through, the facility's operator, Chelsea Senior Living, will "remain the day-to-day operator" of the roughly 100-unit facility, according to a letter to the IDA from Brian Bollich, a partner at MedCore Partners.

Other investment firms have previously bought up assisted living facilities on Long Island, as demand for those properties grows due to the region's aging population.

The "need for facilities like this is definitely growing, nationally overall and in New York specifically," said Alina Denham, an assistant professor in the program in public health at Stony Brook University.

From race track to assisted living

Yaphank AVR Boulevard Chelsea LLC, a company tied to Yonkers-based developer AVR Realty Company, built the three-story assisted living facility around 2020, according to the company's 2016 Brookhaven IDA application and satellite images of the site.  

The assisted living facility sits within The Boulevard development, a 322-acre mixed-use project that Rose-Breslin Associates built on top of the Parr Meadows — a short-lived horse racing track.

About four years after building the facility, the developer sold it to MedCore Partners for $22 million, according to Suffolk County property records and MedCore's website.

When Medcore Partners took over the project, the tax abatement deal came with it.

Tax break deal

MedCore Partners received at least $1 million in tax savings on the facility in 2024 and 2025, according to the IDA's annual reports.

For Investcorp to continue to receive those benefits if it buys the property, the facility must meet the IDA's job requirements of 50 workers. As of October, the facility employed 50 staffers who make an average annual salary of $42,900, according to Investcorp's IDA application.

Bahrain-based Investcorp, which manages more than $60 billion in assets, will also benefit from another tax break deal on the luxury senior housing complex The Residences at Plainview. A subsidiary of Investcorp purchased The Residences, also managed by Chelsea Senior Living, in April for $49.1 million, property records show.

That tax abatement agreement through the Nassau County IDA is set to expire in 2040, according to the IDA's 2025 annual report.

Investcorp owns seven other multifamily, industrial and office properties on Long Island, according to the commercial real estate data company CoStar.

High demand for assisted living

As demand for assisted living has risen from a growing number of older would-be residents, so has appetite from investors looking to buy these properties.

"It's become a money pot" for investors, said Richard Mollot, executive director of the Manhattan-based Long Term Care Community Coalition. "It's so expensive, mostly private pay, and we have an aging population."

Just last year, Chicago-based real estate investment trust Ventas Inc. agreed to acquire five assisted living facilities under The Bristol brand and another this spring, Newsday reported. Atria Senior Living Inc. bought two assisted living facilities in Patchogue and Levittown earlier this year.

Assisted living facilities tend to be expensive, Mollot said. Rents at The Chelsea at Brookhaven, for example, start at $6,000 a month for a studio and $8,000 a month for a one-bedroom, according to New York State Department of Health records.

Chelsea Senior Living did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the company's rates.

Mollot said that assisted living facilities tend to be less regulated than nursing homes, making it more difficult to understand a facility's quality. He and Denham both worried that an investment firm owner would prioritize profits, hampering resident care, even though the operator of The Chelsea would not change through a potential sale.

"There's a lot of issues, in quality as well as accountability, that come into play when you have private equity or another sophisticated investor coming in," Mollot said. "It's structured for financial efficiency and to maximize returns."