Merrill Gardens at Greenville

Judy8

We moved to Merrill Gardens at Greenville, and it's very, very good. The food is good, and they're always changing their menu, and when people make suggestions, they try to incorporate those into the menu. They have someone that comes once a week and does the floors and the bathrooms and cleans the counters, and those kinds of things. The building itself is well-maintained. It's a very well-built building. It isn't that old. It's a nice facility and has lots of public spaces if you want to entertain people. They have a parlor. They have a gym. They have an outdoor pool and elevators. They have activities. They have a bus that can take you to medical appointments. They also take you weekly to the grocery store if you want to go, and they do have outings with them, as well as a staff on board that does a whole set of activities. Every day is something different. The staff is the very best. They're caring. They stay up on things. They bother to know who you are. In the restaurant, they try to know what your preferences are. They're very friendly, always upbeat, and they're always available. I think they're exceptional. It's not cheap, and you have to be at least 62 to come here.

Laura

I toured Merrill Gardens at Greenville. What I liked most first of all is the affordability of it. I didn't think I could find anything downtown Greenville that was affordable. That was the only place as far as the senior living community that was affordable and very nice. It was just a great location. This is pretty new. They have a restaurant there so I went and had lunch with the marketing guy and I was really surprised at how great the food was. It's really healthy and fresh food. They have a lot of nice amenities there. They even had a rooftop area where you could go and cook out and look out over downtown Greenville, which was fantastic. They had a nice pool area, I think it was heated. It was fairly small. I think there were like 140-160 units, something like that. So I didn't consider it that big. The only thing that I did not particularly care for was it was like a high-rise kind of setup like a hotel. The one thing that bothered me and I even mentioned it to the marketing guy, I liked him a lot, but as we were walking down the hallway, he pointed out a resident and said this, so-and-so told me her name and said, she's our oldest resident here and told me her age, and I'm like he's kind of divulging information. That bothered me a little bit that he knew personal information about residents and then was telling me about it. I'm a little concerned about people knowing my privacy, so that was one issue I had that I did bring up with them. They had a move-in special that was very reasonable. I think it was first rent-free. I think everything was included, all the utilities and the three meals a day, plus the snack and internet stuff. They had a good promotion going on. I think they reduced it by $400 a month for the next year and this was a big deal to me. There's no lease, so you could do it month to month. You do sign a contract, but if you want to leave next month, I think you'd have to get a 30-day notice. Then you could go ahead and leave, but the contract essentially said we're not going to raise the rate on you for a year. So I liked that about it. He said, if you live here a year, a month or so and don't like it, you can leave. So that was different, I thought. It's very modern as far as the style of everything, the colors were just really great. I didn't feel like I was in some old folks home.