Crista Senior Community

Also known as Cristwood Park Senior Apartments. It is a lovely facility for seniors who are still somewhat active and still drive.
The one very huge drawback is the food. There is a daily mandatory charge of $ 12.00 per person for one meal per day in the dining room. Only one meal is served per day in the dining room, being dinner. If you request delivery to your apartment there is an additional $ 3.00 charge per meal. (2 meals to one apartment is $ 6.00 just for delivery up the elevator!) This charge is separate from the «dining dollars»… So $ 90.00 a month just for delivery of 1 meal per day. $ 180.00 per month for 2 people…
The dinners leave much to be desired, and that is being more than kind and generous in description. While permissible, most family members refuse to dine with residents when visiting… yes, it’s that bad. There is also a café in the lobby where they can use dining credits, but again the food comes from the same kitchen. Corners are constantly cut here. Since the café was closed for the Holiday, the cookies served from the «fresh» case were beyond stale from before the holiday. They do allow residents to use up the dining dollar credits making purchases from the case in the café to avoid losing the credits each month… they also keep the case empty to prevent this…
Personally, I would have reservations suggesting this place to any one. It’s a nice complex, but the constant construction while they remodel is unbearable at best. The food and service problems would be awful to recommend to anyone needing a little easier lifestyle. Great place if you still drive and can cook or like to dine out a lot. Or if you like all the holiday meals served and done by 2pm buffet style because they cannot keep wait staff.
But if you are looking to starve a loved one… this is the place for you!

From the times I’ve been there transporting patients; it is always clean and the staff is always friendly. They always greet people when they walk in. This is one of the few nice places I have been to out of the many dozens I’ve seen. I am not there all the time; but when I am, it is always clean, friendly and welcoming. I’ve read the many reviews of the place and yet have to see what is so bad about the place. Maybe as an employee working there it is bad; but thenostients always tell me they love it here and think it is an amazing place. I have to agree:)4 star only because it could use a little updating here and there; but it doea seem to be a good, safe and clean place to be.

Crista/​Cristwood Senior Community is overdue for a revamp. That said, the entire industry is ripe for disruption, so Crista is probably not much worse than its competitors. This senior living community is part of Crista ministries, a Christian non-​profit organization. The retirement community is housed in an aging facility about 10 years past its glory days, but to their credit, it’s well maintained enough that it still holds some charms, especially toward the end of the year, when everything is decked out in Christmas festivities. The location is not bad either, it’s close enough to downtown Seattle on a good traffic day, but also tucked away enough in the ‘burbs that you can get some peace and quiet. But don’t even think about walking to take the bus or anything, because the retirement community is located at the bottom of a massive hill. So massive that during snow days and cold, icy days, the road down this hill is closed.
My mom worked at Crista for 10 years and she absolutely adores the residents here, but I was really surprised she lasted this long. Employee morale is quite low across the board and there were questionable behaviors from supervisory staff, such as asking for private information, withholding PTO pay, and more stuff that would be written up in a juicy news article if this was a bigger organization, but alas it is just a small, multi-​million dollar non-​profit. My family moved to the US when I was in high school and my mom’s English is still far from perfect even today. I’m quite sure she doesn’t even know what the minimum wage is… and I think this is exactly the kind of employees they prey on… ooops, I meant recruit. Crista food services workers make less than fast food workers in the same area, for the same amount of work. Sure, non-​profit pay is almost always lower than that of for-​profit organizations, but people pay a fortune to get into this retirement community and there seems to be a major disconnect between the value that you get and the value you pay into Crista. The food you get here is a couple notches up from what you’d find at Old Country Buffet, but at a higher price, and you still get nickel and dimed for extras. There are so few checks and balances, it’s scary. I hope they have more well defined processes and better management on more critical functions, especially in their assisted living community where the residents are less independent, but I really can’t imagine. Maybe because Crista is a non-​profit, they don’t have the same level of quality control, process and structure in place as a for-​profit company would, and that’s a shame.
If you or your loved one are considering moving into this community, I strongly encourage you to explore your alternatives and to do an in-​depth investigation.