By Cincinnati Senior Advisor Care Team · January 26, 2026
A practical look at how Cincinnati's Continuing Care Retirement Communities and Life Plan Communities structure independent living through skilled nursing, with real local examples and the entry-fee questions every family should ask in writing.
What makes a CCRC different from 'just' assisted living
A Continuing Care Retirement Community -- often called a Life Plan Community today -- is built around a single promise: move in while you're healthy and active, and the campus itself carries you through every future level of care you might need, without forcing a search for a new building each time your health changes. That's the core distinction from a standalone assisted living residence or a freestanding memory care house. A standalone community offers one level of care, or sometimes two, on one license. A true CCRC typically offers independent living, assisted living, memory support, and skilled nursing or rehabilitation all on the same campus, under the same overall organization, so a resident who starts in a garden home or apartment can transition to more supportive care down the hall, or a few buildings over, rather than moving across town.
That continuity is the entire value proposition, and it's worth being precise about what it does and doesn't guarantee. Moving to a higher level of care within a CCRC is still generally based on an assessed care need, not simply a preference, and space in a specific building isn't unlimited. But for families trying to avoid a second or third emergency relocation after a health crisis, the model addresses a real and common pain point: the exhausting, stressful search for a new placement that so many families face when a parent's needs suddenly outpace what their current building offers. For a broader look at how this model compares to a standalone assisted living residence on its own, see our comparison at CCRC vs. standalone assisted living.
The nonprofit legacy communities: Twin Lakes and Maple Knoll Village
Two of the most established nonprofit CCRCs in the Cincinnati area sit on opposite sides of I-275 but share a similar philosophy. Twin Lakes, at 9840 Montgomery Road in Montgomery, is operated by Life Enriching Communities and offers the full continuum -- independent living, assisted living, memory support, and skilled nursing and rehabilitation -- alongside a full-service fitness and aquatic center and a dedicated Pastoral Care team. That combination of wellness infrastructure and chaplaincy-style spiritual support is characteristic of how LEC positions its communities: not simply a place to receive care, but a campus built around an active, engaged daily life for residents who are still largely independent when they arrive.
Maple Knoll Village, at 11100 Springfield Pike in Springdale, takes a similar continuum-of-care approach on a considerably larger footprint -- a 54-acre campus that has been operating as a nonprofit CCRC for more than a century. Independent living, assisted living, memory care, and skilled nursing are all present on-site, along with an indoor pool, a wellness center, an arboretum, and a program called Ageless Explorers that organizes group travel for residents. The scale of the Maple Knoll campus, and its long operating history in Springdale, make it worth touring specifically to see how a century of continuous operation has shaped the physical plant and the culture of the place -- long-tenured nonprofit CCRCs often have a different institutional memory and staff continuity than newer, corporately owned communities.
Episcopal Retirement Services: Marjorie P. Lee and Deupree House
Episcopal Retirement Services has operated senior communities in Cincinnati since 1951, and its two flagship Life Plan Communities sit within a few minutes of each other in Hyde Park. Marjorie P. Lee, at 3550 Shaw Avenue, offers independent and enriched living, assisted living, and a memory support program built on SAIDO Learning, a structured cognitive-engagement approach designed to help residents with dementia maintain function through daily learning exercises rather than passive activity. Deupree House, at 3939 Erie Avenue, is Marjorie P. Lee's sister community under the same operator, offering independent and residential living, assisted living, and long-term care, with a dining program that leans on chef-driven menus rather than standard institutional food service.
Because both communities share an operator, a family touring one should ask directly about the relationship between the two -- whether a resident who starts at one campus can transition to the other if a specific level of care or a specific room type isn't available at the first, and how ERS coordinates care records and continuity of physicians across its Hyde Park properties. That kind of operator-level flexibility, when it exists, can be a meaningful advantage over a single freestanding building with no sister campus to lean on when the first choice doesn't have an opening.
High-rise and suburban campus models: The Kenwood and The Seasons
Not every Cincinnati Life Plan Community looks like a sprawling campus. The Kenwood, operated by Senior Star at 5435 Kenwood Road, is a 16-story high-rise offering independent living, assisted living, memory care, and respite stays, along with a notably small, 14-bed boutique skilled-nursing neighborhood rather than a large institutional nursing wing. The building also runs a Rock Steady Boxing program aimed at residents managing Parkinson's disease, and dining on the 16th floor, which gives residents panoramic views as part of daily life rather than a below-grade or windowless dining room. The vertical, urban-style layout suits residents who want walkable proximity to Kenwood-area shopping and amenities without a large horizontal campus to navigate.
The Seasons, at 7300 Dearwester Drive and operated by Senior Lifestyle, takes a more traditional low-rise suburban campus approach, with independent living, assisted living, and skilled nursing on site, plus an on-site greenhouse and a movie theater as differentiating amenities. Comparing a high-rise model like The Kenwood against a horizontal campus like The Seasons is a genuinely useful exercise for families -- some residents strongly prefer the elevator-and-hallway convenience of a single tower, while others want the ability to walk outside to a garden or courtyard without needing an elevator at all. Neither layout is objectively better; it depends heavily on your parent's mobility, preferences, and daily habits.
Otterbein SeniorLife: full Life Plan campuses and the small-house model
Otterbein SeniorLife operates several nonprofit campuses in the greater Cincinnati area, and it's worth understanding that they are not all built the same way. Otterbein Lebanon, at 585 N. State Route 741 in Lebanon, Warren County, is a full Life Plan Community offering the complete continuum from independent living through skilled nursing. Three other nearby Otterbein campuses -- Maineville, Union Township/Batavia, and Loveland -- take a different and increasingly influential approach to skilled nursing specifically, known as the small-house model: five separate houses, each home to just twelve residents, with private suites, family-style dining around a shared table, dedicated memory support, post-acute rehabilitation, and hospice services available within the house rather than in a separate wing.
The small-house model is worth understanding on its own terms rather than assuming it's simply a smaller version of a traditional nursing home. Advocates for the model argue that a twelve-resident household, with consistent staff assigned to that specific house, produces a fundamentally different day-to-day experience than a 60- or 100-bed skilled nursing floor -- more like a household than an institution. Families evaluating post-acute rehab after a hospital stay, or longer-term skilled nursing placement, should ask any Otterbein campus directly which model applies at that specific location, since it genuinely changes what a typical day looks like for a resident.
Understanding entry fees -- and why we won't quote you a number
Nearly every true CCRC in the Cincinnati area operates on some version of an entry-fee contract: a substantial upfront payment made at move-in, in addition to ongoing monthly fees, in exchange for access to the full continuum of care as needs change over time. Entry-fee structures vary enormously between communities and even between contract types within the same community -- some offer partial refundability to the resident's estate, some offer none, and some scale the entry fee and the monthly fee differently depending on whether the resident chooses a Type A, B, or C style contract (terminology that itself varies by operator). We are intentionally not publishing specific dollar figures for any Cincinnati-area entry fee here, because a number that's accurate for one community's one-bedroom apartment under one contract type in one year can be badly misleading applied anywhere else, and pricing changes with some regularity.
What we recommend instead is a specific written request to every community you're seriously considering: ask for the current entry-fee schedule across all unit types and contract options, the refund policy in plain language (including what happens if the resident dies or moves out within the first year versus later), and how the entry fee and monthly fee change if the resident later needs to transition to assisted living, memory care, or skilled nursing on the same campus. Get these details in writing, not just described verbally on a tour, and compare them side by side across every community on your list before eliminating options based on a rough estimate you heard secondhand. For a broader breakdown of how monthly and entry-fee costs work across the region, see our page on senior living costs in Cincinnati.
How Ohio actually regulates these communities
It helps to understand exactly what state oversight does and doesn't apply to a Cincinnati CCRC, because the regulatory picture is genuinely different from what families moving from other states often expect. Ohio does not license assisted living in tiers the way some states do; instead, assisted living statewide falls under a single Residential Care Facility, or RCF, license governed by Ohio Revised Code 3721 and Ohio Administrative Code 3701-16. That means the assisted living or memory support wing of a Cincinnati CCRC is licensed the same way as any standalone assisted living residence in the state -- there's no separate, higher-tier license specifically for CCRC-based assisted living.
Independent living, by contrast, is typically unlicensed housing in Ohio, precisely because no personal care services are being provided at that level -- residents are simply renting an apartment or cottage with access to amenities and, often, meals. The skilled nursing component of a CCRC is a different matter entirely: nursing homes in Ohio are licensed separately under Ohio Administrative Code 3701-17, and unlike assisted living, nursing homes are star-rated by CMS on Medicare's Care Compare website. That means you can look up objective, federally reported quality data for the skilled nursing wing of a Cincinnati CCRC before you tour, but you cannot do the same for its assisted living or memory care sections -- for those, direct observation on a tour, resident and family interviews, and a review of the state's inspection survey history are your best sources of comparative information. Our full Cincinnati senior living directory is a useful starting point for building your list of communities to tour and compare.
