Merrill Gardens at Burien

Merrill Gardens in Burien has interesting activities for the residents. Last year I was invited to a wonderful 4th of July Marimba steel band concert and lunch. I taught school in the Highline School District, which surrounds the Burien area. Today there was a farmer’s market with fun activities for families and children.

Merrill Gardens in Burien is a wonderful community. I feel good about my mother living here. The staff know residents names and engage with them daily. The residents are open to making new friends and bringing others into activities. It is clean and well managed. My Mom has been a resident here for almost 4 years.

My Auntie lived here! Everyone is friendly, helpful, always clean, lots of activities as well! Well done

Excellent staff at MG Burien! Everyone we've encountered has always been friendly and attentive to our needs. Good food too!

LOCATION! With the farmers market basically in their back yard and walking distance to all the wonderful family owned and operated bussinesses in Burien's revitalized downtown this is a wonderful Senior Living Community.

As a hospice provider for Merrill Gardens in Burien, I can’t say enough good about this community! Their Resident Care Manager James Nyoro is fantastic along with the rest of the staff. If you want to live to one of the best communities go see Rita Community Relations Director, she will make your move seemless. I love Merrill Communities 💕

I have visited Merrill Gardens twice and my mother is preparing to move in there this month. As a healthcare provider who has done extensive research on local assisted livings I just want to say that so far I have been impressed. I even spoke to 3 current residents and they each expressed that this was a good place. I appreciate the work and precautions they have put in to place to protect the staff and residents, and unfortunately there are people who will think that being conservative in response to a pandemic is not warranted, but this makes me want my mom to be here even more. Location is amazing, provided lunch was great!

Merrill Gardens is not giving residents adequate information on the risks of the Covid vaccine and is using coercion to gain compliance. My grandmother did not want the shot, but took it anyway because it was the only way she would be allowed to see her family, as per Merrill Gardens policies. Oh and residents still have to wear masks because the shot doesn't prevent transmission. Go figure.

I moved my mother from a CCRC to Merrill Gardens Burien where she lived for a year in Memory Care. The building and interiors are beautiful; the food is pretty good for these types of places. However, the care for my mother was very poor and the cleanliness of Memory Care was also poor. The staff with a few exceptions were poorly trained, overworked, poor communicators, tired (all had multiple jobs besides this one), and often unresponsive. Residents' family members were having to clean, assist other residents, and sometimes help with serving meals to help attend to the 10 residents. There were strange incidents and talk of unanswered calls from residents, undue force, Memory care patients walking out, getting lost and falling miles away, residents defecating in the common areas and entering all the other residents rooms and an altercation. We experienced one night CNA who did not how to read a thermometer or blood pressure, myself and another family member had to assist two other residents get to a toilet when no CNA could be found for 30 minutes. We finally moved my mother to an adult family home where we found that my mother stopped falling all the time, became less agitated, was cleaned, got a doctor who would come to her, had nails and skin actually taken care of rather than promised at Merrill. Her room always smells fresh and I never have to clean her toilet like I had to do at Merrill Gardens Burien several times a week. They do her laundry, provide toilet paper and diapers, tissue, bandage supplies without charging extra for every little thing delivered or not. If you go into Memory Care or have a family member that needs to, be prepared to pay another $500 a month in supplies, providing some of the care yourself and in our case we had to hire additional outside 1:1 care to ensure more safety, help with cleaning and laundry (even though many of these services were claimed to be included or provided if extra is paid) if you plan to use Merrill. We even begged the management to allow us to pay them for additional care. We were led to believe that our difficulties were due to my mother being a difficult resident. What we have since learned is that she's not easy to care for but there are many, many places that know and can care for memory issues. Merrill Gardens Burien is not one of those places.

When I first visited Merrill Gardens almost two years ago, I jumped to the conclusion that MG was way to progressive for Mom. My visit was on a Friday afternoon and the Friday Happy Hour was in full swing. Music from a live band was playing, appetizers were being served, and residents were dancing to the tunes. At this point in my moms life, she was doing NOTHING LIKE THAT. My mom suffers from Alzheimer's and I felt she could never fit in with this group of active people. After several more visits by myself and my sister, and after a visit to my moms house by a MG assessor, James, it was decided that we would make the move to MG. Mom was not to thrilled about moving out of the family home of 55 years with two of her children living next door. As it turns out, this was the best thing she could have done. I truly believe that her Alzheimer's disease progression has slowed as a result of her moving into MG. The stimulation she receives there is so good for her mind. Nearly two years after our difficult decision, my mom has gained weight (she was forgetting to eat), she is still in assisted care and has not had to move into memory care (which I attribute excellent care she is receiving), and her attitude is excellent. Mom tells us almost daily how much she loves living at Merrill Gardens. She participates daily in the exercise classes, enjoys Thursday Bible Study, goes on field trips, and participates in planned small group discussions. Residents are encouraged to attend monthly meetings to insure continuous improvement. I also appreciate how welcoming the staff treats extended family at MG. My wife and I love to enjoy Friday Happy Hour (our regular Friday afternoon date spot), and enjoy having a meal with mom prepared by an Award winning culinary team. The activities coordinator, Betsy, is amazing and makes certain everyone is having a good time and is safe. One of the activities to a Mariners baseball game ended up being on a very sunny day. My mom forgot to bring a cap to protect her from the sun. Betsy could see mom was struggling because of the sun, so she bought her a cap. I think that example pretty much sums up the overall dedication the staff feels towards the residents at MG. We have said many times, that when the time is right, we would love to move in.

I helped move family members into a two bedroom, two bath apartment, the independent living section. Facilities were quite clean and the main dining area was very pleasant. For two people the charge is approximately $6900/month; one person occupancy would be approximately $6100.

I moved here over a year ago, when it first opened, and living here has been a great experience. I have met many new interesting people and renewed old acquaintances. Since the building was brand new it was a learning curve for the residents and staff, but problems have been addressed and either solved or being worked on. The residents are concerned and help each other. There is a real sense of community.

My mother lived at Burien Merrill Gardens for about 9 months before she passed away in January. While the common areas and rooms are very nice and new, I found many things to be average or disappointing. The meals were average. The activities were average. The staff - other than a couple people - were disappointing (unfriendly, over-worked, aloof at times). Most disappointing, however, was the handling of my mother's death. We did not receive any card, note, or call to express sympathy (such a simple gesture which would have meant much). We were not told they had my mother's wedding ring for 1 week (meanwhile our funeral director was frantically trying to track it down!). And, most upsetting was that on the last day we were moving her things out of her unit (which had been paid until the end of the month), we arrived to find the new residents name on her door AND the new residents welcome package (with coupons, food, and other goodies) sitting on top of my mother's bed! This was insensitivity at its worst! I wrote to the Burien MG and the MG Corporate Office in an attempt to find out why the handling was so horrible (and to suggest a kinder way of dealing with this situation - given they had had at least 4 deaths in a week and will surely have more to come!), but I never received a return call or letter. This tells me that it is just about the dollars - not the residents or the families. I would recommend looking into other retirement communities before Merrill Gardens.

We were lured in by the newness and beautiful interior when Merrill first opened in Burien. We were also initially impressed by management and felt certain we had found the right place for our mother. After moving her into Memory Care the following months were basically a nightmare for our family. The care was inadequate, undertrained and understaffed for the first 6 months at least. Our family had to come in almost everyday to help our mother dress, bathe,use the toilet, get into and out of bed and more. Her laundry had to be taken home and washed even though it was suppose to be done by Merrill. Extra care givers were finally hired in early January but we continued to notice that their training just was not enough to deal with the special needs of those residents with dementia. The last straw came when our mother was sent to the ER in the early morning hours for severe bruising she had incurred on both her forearms from a male attendant who tried to physically force her back to room. The ER staff knew right away that her injuries were severe enough to file a complaint for possible elder abuse with the state. It took time but the family was finally able to move our mother to another facility where her care is far more attentive and professional.