Reneé Ramsey

On the cusp of opening the doors to Mustang Creek Estates in Flower Mound, the CEO Reneé Ramsey told us how growing up in the area and knowing people who live there now, make this latest campus the one of the closest to her heart. She’s striving to build a senior community that is affordable while providing quality care in an intimate setting.

“Mustang Creek Estates is very unique in the world of senior living,” she said. “We are very proud to own and operate an assisted living community. Owner groups or real estate groups normally dominate the senior living scene with no true roots in the community.” Ramsey’s roots run deep in an area where people know her name and trust her to deliver care she would offer to her own family and friends.

Home & Garden

Imagine an area lush with foliage. “If you can imagine driving into a wooded area and back on a curvy road through the trees, then into a neighborhood of six homes,” said Ramsey, then you can picture the new location. Though they’re in the heart of Flower Mound, she told us the area feels like a small nature retreat. As it opens, a 10,000-square-foot home with 16 bedrooms and bathrooms will accommodate residents first, and then six similar homes will be built nearby to create the feeling of a neighborhood.

Homes will accommodate 16 residents in each, with assisted care 24 hours a day to include medication assistance, daily housekeeping, home cooked meals, laundry services, incontinent care, mobility assistance and activities.

Open to seniors needing varied levels of assistance, the community is nonetheless built to encourage comradery, eschewing the long, bleak hallways and no-access areas of institutional settings. Here, residents can walk into the kitchen and grab things from the fridge, and enjoy dietician-created meal plans and freshly prepared meals. All food is sourced at the local grocery store for fresh ingredients. Activities and excursions are planned often, and some residents will even volunteer with the local LISD school district, from which Ramsey purchased the land that Mustang Creek will sit on. After 18 years of operating Mustang Creek neighborhoods in Texas, Ramsey says this new one will be the flagship.

Connection and Purpose

“I grew up in the Lewisville and Flower Mound area. I was a product of LISD from kindergarten all the way through,” said Ramsey. Her mother also taught in the district for 30 years. Both of Ramsey’s parents, Cindy and Bob Neander, meanwhile, also live in Flower Mound, so building in the area puts the Mustang Creek CEO close to home, where she has to answer to her own community. “I hope to serve my parents and their friends,” she said.

Ramsey found her way to assisted living by facing health challenges and finding purpose in service. As a child with scoliosis, she found help at Scottish Rite Hospital. “I was really intrigued by physical therapy and had a good relationship with ,” she said. Deciding to become a physical therapist, she imagined that she might enjoy working with children. Instead, she found herself called to serve the opposite spectrum in age. She adored her seniors. When a company she worked for had an opportunity for her to move from therapy to assisted living, she felt that move would allow her a greater impact on senior’s lives.

Beating the Odds

Ramsey’s very first project was in Allen. After she bought a piece of land on Mustang Creek, she used it to name the community, and Mustang Creek Estates was born. “We built six,” she said. “Honestly we didn’t know if it was going to be six houses. We didn’t know then if it was going to be successful. We took a big jump.”

Her concept was not in use anywhere else, said Ramsey, and experts told her the cost of bringing her idea to fruition would be too high. Instead, she found that Mustang Creek was warmly embraced.

“As you arrive, you see a unique neighborhood of six homes built from the ground up to care for the unique needs of our residents,” said Ramsey. “It’s a beautiful residential style assisted living and memory care neighborhood designed entirely for seniors with quality care and services, at an affordable price.”

Since then, growth has been steady but not speedy, due largely to the fact that Ramsey stakes her own equity to build and operate. Investors are not part of the picture. “It’s really us. We aren’t publicly traded. At the end of the day, we just have ourselves to answer to. That is important to us,” she said. In a world where private equity has earned a dismal reputation for buying senior care centers and sometimes driving up costs for seniors, Mustang Creek defies the odds and protects itself by owning land and property.

Harmonious Living

When residents first move in, Ramsey says Mustang Creek does their best to get to know their likes and dislikes. Residents are catered to based on preferences and they show deep care for each other too. They notice if someone has not been to breakfast, or has not come out of their room, and so on. For our seniors, life is still vibrant, beautiful, and filled with community. That’s the kind of world Ramsey is proud to help sustain.