A New Wrinkle in Retirement
The fading browns and military greens are being painted over in beige and peach. Fiber optic cables poke out of manicured lawns shaded by 30-year-old eucalyptus trees. And some of the ranch-style homes with low ceilings and shag carpet are getting a face lift with skylights, hardwood floors, Corian counters and two phone lines.
Leisure World is gussying up for the “Me Generation.”
The first of the baby boomers--the 76 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964--turn 50 this year, closing in on eligibility for “active adult” communities that cater to the 55-and-ups.
Throughout the country, similar senior housing developments are reinventing themselves. And some of America’s biggest home builders are grabbing land and planning senior communities to house the next generation of retirees.
Builders are not sure what baby boomers will want in senior housing communities, and neither are the boomers. A generation that defined rebellion could find it hard to admit aging--and may not want to move to traditional planned communities for the elderly.
“Boomers are going to try and break the stereotype of what being old is,” said Huntington Beach architect Ken Rohde, a 44-year-old who designs retirement developments. “It’s inevitable that they will redefine aging and eventually senior housing.”
The whole idea of retirement communities will need to be revolutionized if builders want to attract the next generation of buyers--especially folks like Joan Hemphill.
A former Vietnam War protester who celebrated her 50th birthday last month, Hemphill can’t imagine moving from her 1940s-era Long Beach condominium into a seniors-only housing project.
“Oh, ick,” said Hemphill. “I just don’t like uniformity--or all those rules. I’d probably like to be somewhere more rural,” she said, “but I don’t do well with enforced activities.”
Still, home builders across America are betting that demands for safety, a warm, healthful climate and an easier lifestyle eventually will lure the retirees from their paid-off homes and into communities designed to fulfill their dreams.
If they are right, the gamble could pay off big time. The number of Americans 55 and older will reach 75 million by 2010, up from 55 million in 1995, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The change is already underway:
* Newport Beach architect John Tully is designing what he calls “rural” retirement communities where the emphasis is on hiking trails and nature instead of golf carts and water aerobics. Tully is planning 12,000 homes in Silver City, N.M., a community bordering a national wilderness area that will cater to the aging Sierra Club crowd.
* Some developers are considering “communes” in California and Colorado for aging boomers who want to return to the camaraderie of their university days, a time of self-exploration in the midst of people their age.
* Longtime senior housing builder Del Webb Corp., which developed Sun City communities throughout the nation, is looking at new developments close to urban work centers that will incorporate smaller houses and home offices.
* California’s largest home builder, Kaufman & Broad Home Corp. in Los Angeles, is diversifying from its focus on first-time buyers to low-income apartment projects for seniors and its first single-family homes targeted to seniors in Las Vegas.
“Builders’ eyes have been opened to the tremendous demographic shift coming their way,” said Del Webb’s Ken Plonski, chairman of the Senior Housing Council, part of the National Assn. of Home Builders in Washington, D.C. “Those boomers are coming and we’ve got to anticipate their needs.”
First on the drawing board: “rural” communities for boomers who want to leave their urban habitats but do not have the cash to retire to a ranch.
Although homes in these communities will be similar to those being built in other planned communities, the focus will be radically different, say architects and builders.
“This is for a more sophisticated, older boomer crowd,” said architect Tully. “All throughout Southern California, what we’re hearing is retirees saying, ‘Where can I go live where a pond is?’ ”
In Silver City, Tully is designing California Craftsman-style homes in a massive community targeted at but not limited to people 55 and older. Most important, the development borders a 1-million-acre national wilderness area where residents can fish, hike and camp.
There are none of the typical golf carts or aquatics classes. Instead, boomers can retire in the country with two-bedroom homes that start at around $95,000, said Tully.
This type of community could be just what the boomers are looking for, said Cheryl Russell, author and editor of the Boomer Report, a newsletter published in the Bay Area. She believes future retirees will not want to move into existing senior developments filled with elderly people.
“This is the generation that said, ‘Don’t trust anyone over 30,’ ” said Russell. “Now it’s: ‘Don’t trust anyone over 65.’ ”
Boomers are individualistic and well-educated and will eventually leave the traditional workplace, said Russell. But they will need to work longer than the previous generation because of their poor saving habits, according to her newsletter. Boomers may be working well into their 70s, and senior housing will need to accommodate those trends, Russell said.
According to a recent Del Webb survey of boomers, about 30% said they plan to retire from their primary career before age 60, according to the survey, while another 36% are planning to move to another home for retirement, with a large number considering a move to another state.
As they age, Russell believes, boomers will be attracted to “think tank” retirement communities that echo what the Walt Disney Co. has done with its Disney Institute, a resort in Orlando, Fla., that offers workshops in the culinary arts, entertainment and design, among other subjects.
“Think tank” communities could offer courses for second careers and bring in interesting speakers as the Disney Institute has done, she said. Already, the Disney Institute has signed a number of celebrities, including former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and architect Frank O. Gehry, to serve as part-time artists-in-residence.
“Boomers will want the world to come to them,” she said.
At Leisure World in Laguna Hills, residents believe that affordable homes on 2,100 acres of landscaped hills less than 10 miles from the ocean will attract boomers.
“We’re the granddaddy of senior housing communities, and we’re not going to sit around here and let this place get condemned. We’ve got to get it ready for the next generation,” said Bob Ring, 63, president of the condominium association at Leisure World. Ring moved in when he was 55.
A homeowners association that runs the condominiums at Leisure World just hired the Richardson, Nagy, Martin architecture firm in Newport Beach to help give Leisure World its face lift. The firm designed a significant portion of Irvine.
The dream of California developer Ross Cortese, the first Leisure World was built in Seal Beach in 1961. Several years later, Cortese built the much larger Leisure World in Laguna Hills.
It is California’s largest retirement community, home to nearly 18,000 residents. With an arts and crafts center, equestrian center, a 27-hole golf course and five swimming pools, Leisure World would be nearly impossible for builders to re-create today, said Annie Gerard, president of the Orange County arm of the Senior Housing Council.
“The land, the amenities, it would be just too expensive,” said Gerard.
Southern California builder Kathryn Thompson, who is advising Leisure World on its revamp, said its homes will need to be remodeled or even torn down. “First thing we need to do is work on the image,” said Thompson, whose eponymous company has built thousands of California homes in the past 20 years.
She would like to replace the old iron gate around Leisure World with a cream-colored stucco wall. The giant golden globe that is Leisure World’s symbol could be moved away from its place near the freeway. The tiny guard boxes could be replaced with something “light and bright,” she said.
“We’re still deciding if we want to renovate or bulldoze,” said Kirk Watilo, director of community and government relations at Leisure World in Laguna.
Like Leisure World, Del Webb Corp. of Phoenix is trying to make the transition.
The company’s founder, Del E. Webb, who built the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas for Bugsy Siegel and once owned the New York Yankees--built America’s first retirement community in 1960. That first Sun City, in Phoenix, drew 100,000 people on its opening day. It now stretches across 14 square miles and has 46,000 residents.
More than 30 years later, the company built another Sun City--what it calls its “crown jewel”--a gated community near Palm Springs off Interstate 10, where temperatures easily reach 115 in the summer and golf carts are the vehicles of choice.
That Sun City and a companion community in the city of Roseville in Northern California have been the best-selling housing developments in California for the past two years, according to sales data.
Now, Del Webb is trying to figure out how to design its newer communities to entice its “future customers,” said CEO Phil Dion.
Its latest project is Sun City-Grand in Arizona, the 10th Sun City, designed for “active adults of the 21st century.” It is being built to resemble a lushly landscaped resort so residents feel they are on permanent vacation, with theaters, bowling and other entertainment available.
One of the most attractive states now for seniors is Nevada, where a warm climate and a low tax base are causing a building boom.
In Las Vegas, builders are trying to reach what they call the “empty nester” market. Kaufman & Broad is getting its feet wet in the senior housing market with its new Sentosa community there.
“When you move to a Sun City, you’re making a statement that you’re old and retired,” said Jay Moss, 46, president of Kaufman & Broad’s Nevada division. “There’s something about the baby boomers that doesn’t want to be identified with that.”
That idea is being taken even further by some developers and entrepreneurs who are considering developing smaller communities they are calling “collegiate.”
Although no one really thinks boomers want to go back to campus, some builders think that the “commune” or “collegiate” housing concept may be attractive to those seeking to recapture their youth.
Timothy P. Sullivan, senior managing director of the Meyers Group, an Irvine real estate consulting firm, is working with several consortiums of developers to create villages of senior housing for boomers near areas such as Walnut Creek, Calif., or Colorado Springs, Colo.
The communities will “look inward,” said Sullivan, perhaps based around some kind of community center so residents can get to know each other.
The new retirees will have time to return to things they enjoyed at 23 or 24, like exercising or debating the meaning of life.
Getting older is really a “rejuvenation of youth,” Sullivan said, adding: “One of my most enjoyable times was being in college with my peers. You’re in a bubble of your own world.”
