Hassle-Free Housing for Well-Heeled Senior Citizens : Birtcher Initiates ‘Congregate Living’ Project for Retirees
The Birtcher Co., which made its mark by constructing high-rise and high-tech buildings, has become one of the first major Orange County builders to join a new nationwide wave of developers providing hassle-free housing for the retired.
Just outside Gate 3 of Rossmoor Leisure World in Laguna Hills, Birtcher is grading 7.8 acres in preparation to build a $27-million Mediterranean-style housing project for mostly well-heeled senior citizens. Its prospective tenants no longer will want to bother with housework and routine cooking. And they will desire such recreational facilities as card and billiard rooms, putting green, Jacuzzi and lap pool as well as valet parking and a limo to take them shopping and to doctor’s appointments.
The 234-unit project on Moulton Parkway is expected to open for occupancy in April of 1988. It is intended as the flagship that will lead the Birtcher company’s entry into the hotly competitive “congregate living” industry, bridging the gap between traditional retirement housing and skilled nursing homes.
Ron Birtcher, a partner in the Laguna Niguel-based, family-owned development company, said the company’s goal is to build two to four new congregate living projects a year. He said he already has another building site in escrow in Orange County and is negotiating other land purchases in San Diego and Santa Barbara counties.
‘We Will Take Our Time’
“We want to be a major player, but we will take our time in getting there . . . We are feeling our way,” said Robert H. Brownsberger, vice president of development for congregate living facilities at Birtcher. Brownsberger, formerly an independent Newport Beach developer, joined the Birtcher staff in January of 1986 to set up the new enterprise. He said he has been boning up on the just-emerging elderly housing field for 3 1/2 years.
Brownsberger said that the complex under construction, to be called the Wellington at Laguna Hills, also represents the first venture into congregate living for Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna Life Life & Casualty Co., Birtcher’s financial partner on the project. “The idea is to have them (Aetna) involved in all of our deals,” Brownsberger said. But he cautioned that Aetna’s continued interest will depend heavily on the outcome of the Wellington.
Providing congregate housing for the active elderly is “the toughest part of the (development) business that I have ever been part of,” Brownsberger said. Besides designing and building facilities, he said, Birtcher will continue to own and manage them. Within the last two months, he said, he has added to his staff Steven L. Steele, formerly regional vice president of Southmark Corp.’s retirement community division, as vice president of marketing and management. Also joining Birtcher is Martha C. McCall, a gerontologist.
Steele plans to hire a 44-person staff for the Wellington, ranging from a recreation director and cook to waitresses and cleaning people.
As early as July, Brownsberger said the Wellington will begin taking reservations for its units, which will start with monthly rates of $1,400 to $2,700, including two meals a day, housekeeping and other services. Even so, he expects that after the project is completed it will take another 18 to 20 months to fill.
Leisure World as Source
Brownsberger said that the project is geared to the needs and extraordinarily high income levels of Laguna Hills residents. He figures that 80% of the facility’s tenants will come from within a five- to 10-mile radius. Many, he said, probably will be drawn from Leisure World. When it opened more than 20 years ago, Leisure World sold homes primarily to younger retirees who have since aged and may require more services.
But the Wellington is not the only game in town. Across the street, Pasadena-based Beverly Enterprises one year ago opened a 192-unit retirement facility with support services called Palm Terrace. And about a mile away, Ross Cortese, the developer of Leisure World, plans to open a 192-unit high-service complex for the elderly in the fall of 1988. As an indication of the rivalry that already exists, both Cortese and Birtcher wanted to use the name Regency for their projects and came to verbal blows before Birtcher dropped that name for Wellington.
As the competition mounts, each complex in Laguna Hills is promising to be more luxurious than the next. Brownsberger said the Wellington will offer a panoramic view of the Saddleback Valley, activity areas the size of football fields and living quarters with up to two bedrooms, den and kitchen.
Supply Ahead of Demand
Bob Hendrickson, a retirement housing specialist in the Newport Beach office of the accounting firm of Kenneth Leventhal, said that firm has done a market study which shows if all the congregate living facilities planned for Orange County are built in the proposed time frame, “supply is definitely ahead of demand,” at least for the next five years. But he added that the population of persons 75 and older, who are considered chief prospects for such housing, will continue to expand--and at a slightly faster pace in Orange County than in the rest of the state.
Hendrickson said that in addition to the Cortese, Birtcher and Beverly Enterprises projects, he knows of at least two more facilities being built in south Orange County and six others planned in the northern part of the county.
He said Kenneth Leventhal is doing “strategic planning” for several other major Orange County-based builders who want to build congregate living facilities for the elderly. He said that because of the current overbuilt market for apartments and office buildings, “builders are looking to get into other areas.”
