Westminster Palms

My family and I toured this location with my mother, since she now lives in a house out of town and needs to be closer to us. The campus is in a superb location in downtown St. Petersburg, overlooking North Shore Park. This is prime real estate, with many expensive condos and large homes nearby, and it is within blocks of the heart of St. Petersburg's waterfront (Beach Drive). Cost is reasonable, not cheap, but reasonable. I have been to less attractive places, in worse locations, that cost more. Being a non-profit, they are not a greedy penny-pinching business. Apartments and facility are constantly upgraded and well maintained. They have an amazing amount of activities and ammenities in and around the buildings. Walk across the street to a softball game, or take their little bus down the street to lunch, the Mahaffey, museums, or the pier once it is built! Very friendly staff, and residents appear happy and content. It is much more like a fancy hotel than a retirement community!

We are extremely happy with it. My parents are extremely happy with it. It was our first choice, from our many connections in the area. And when we saw how very affordable it was, we were delighted.

I only met three people on the staff . The person at the front desk, I think she was a female, she was nice. The marketing director was amazingly accommodating and showed us around even though he had a 12 o'clock appointment. We also saw the maintenance man as he passed through back and forth and he was nice. We saw some women sitting down talking and also saw a woman with some dogs. The marketing director said that the woman was a special case because when she came one the dogs was old and wasn't going to live to much longer but they accommodated her due to that reason. I saw that with all of the Westminster's, all off them are quite accommodating. It was very clean nothing was out of place. Nothing needed to be dusted. From what I saw of the staff they were friendly. I didn't really see any of the amenities, but from what I read of them you're getting what you paid for. Didn't get to see the care or any of the activities either.

We found everyone at Westminster Palms to be extremely helpful and friendly, especially Jerry Bushey. He was especially sensitive to the specific needs of my mother and went above and beyond to help her feel comfortable at Westminster Palms.

Jerry Bushey was great and very helpful.

The community may appear to be a high end living experience on the surface, but the truth is that you will be paying a substantial sum for limited returns. The administration is absolutely disorganized and uncaring. Policies will change without notice and the bottom dollar and profits are given priority to resident well being and needs. If you plan on moving to the community, be prepared to be bombarded with empty and false promises and expect to pay for something which is not worth the lies they feed you in print and shady marketing staff which will sell you the world in order to make the sale. They will typically place you in the inappropriate level of care and later move you around to increase their assisted living and skilled nursing census. Beware, be wise, steer clear.

It was nice, of course I liked the downtown on the waterfront and stuff and they were nice to talk to them. We took a 30 minute tour and it looked like a nice place, but she told me pretty much right when we got in the car that she preferred the other place over this because she was more familiar with it.

Things are going great, it's certainly a 5. We chose it for two reasons, number one, it was close to our house and number two just the overall clealiness and professionalism of the staff when we met with them. Since then my mother in law has been very happy there, she's constantly talking about how good the food is and how nice the little programs are and how friendly and helpful the staff is. She enjoys the meals with the other ladies and she meets with them at other times, I think they just sit around and socialize but she's making friends. It's going better than I thought it would. I think it's an upper end facilty but I do think we're getting our money's worth out of it. It's definitely going better than we expected, she seems very very happy which was all we ever wanted.