Overall sentiment in the aggregated review summaries is mixed but leans heavily toward serious concern and dissatisfaction. While several reviewers praise individual staff members as friendly, attentive, and caring and note positive items like on-time hot meals, meal variety, on-site staff presence, and a generally caring environment, an overwhelming number of complaints focus on communication failures, safety issues, management deficiencies, and cleanliness or operational problems. The frequency and severity of the negative reports – including allegations of mistreatment, failure to administer medications, reports to police, and calls to shut the facility down – are major red flags that dominate the reviews.
Care quality and staffing: Reviews present a split picture. Many reviewers single out direct-care staff as compassionate and attentive, suggesting that day-to-day caregiving can be positive. However, this is undermined by numerous reports of poor responsiveness, rude behavior from some staff members, and systemic staffing problems such as overcrowding (e.g., multiple residents sharing a single bathroom) and a lack of appropriate orderlies for gender-specific care. Several reviewers describe management as absent or noncommunicative (e.g., a manager often behind a closed office door), indicating a gap between frontline caregivers and administrative oversight. The combination of praised individual caregivers and criticized staffing/management suggests inconsistent standards and uneven supervision.
Communication and family contact: Communication failures are one of the most consistent and troubling themes. Multiple reviewers report an inability to reach the facility by phone, unresponsive voicemails, and no contact information provided to family members. There are specific and serious claims of families not being informed about hospitalizations and even the passing of a relative. While at least one review mentioned “easy communication” and “open visitation,” the balance of accounts indicates that families frequently experience poor or nonexistent communication, restricted phone access in some cases, and a lack of timely updates — all of which severely undermine trust and transparency.
Facilities, safety, and cleanliness: Comments about the physical plant are mixed but include specific safety concerns. Some reviewers describe the facility as clean, while others call it dingy, dark, dirty, or “nasty.” A concrete safety hazard — sunken walkways needing repair — was explicitly cited. Reports of residents escaping or eloping, alleged mistreatment, and claims that medications were not given add to safety concerns. Overcrowding and shared bathroom issues also raise questions about hygiene and resident dignity. Taken together, the facility environment appears inconsistent, with some positive aspects but several concrete and potentially hazardous problems that require attention.
Operations, activities, and policies: Operational issues surface in several areas. Reviewers mention the absence of a recreation director or a lack of meaningful activities, restrictive or unclear rules, and limited visitation hours reported by some families (contradicting other reports of open visitation). Management-related complaints — such as lack of transparency, inaccessible leadership, and staff unresponsiveness — indicate systemic problems in policy enforcement and administration. The most severe operational allegations include police reports and calls from reviewers urging the facility be shut down, which signal that at least some incidents have reached crisis levels.
Dining and routine services: This is one of the clearer positive areas. Multiple reviewers praise the meals as hot and delivered on time, with variety. These consistent comments suggest that dietary and meal-service operations are a relative strength compared with communication, management, and safety.
Overall synthesis and caution for prospective families: Although there are genuine positives — notably caring frontline staff and reliable meals — the recurring and serious negatives (poor communication, management absence, safety hazards, allegations of mistreatment, inability to reach the facility, and reports of dirty or dingy conditions) create a pattern of concern. Several reviewers explicitly advise against placing loved ones at this facility and call it unsafe. The contradictions in visitation and communication reports (some say open visitation/easy communication while many others report restricted access and unanswered calls) point to inconsistent policies or inconsistent enforcement.
If considering Cedar Retirement Center, prospective residents and families should proceed with caution. Verify current leadership and staffing levels, ask for written communication protocols and direct contact numbers, inspect the property for safety hazards (including walkways and bathroom arrangements), inquire about medication administration processes and incident reporting, request documentation about past police or regulatory incidents, and observe mealtime and activity programs in person. The review pattern indicates potential for good direct caregiving, but also systemic issues that materially affect resident safety, family communication, and overall quality of life.
