A short walk to a longer life: Part 1, the buildings
The older we get, the more physical movement puts us at risk. A broken hip can be a death sentence, as my 88-year-old aunt discovered two years ago. Sprightly and independent, if occasionally fearful, she never recovered, wasting away after a futile and valiant attempt to recover her spirit. Her mind remained active, but the betraying fragility of her body drained her spirit.
When it breaks, the soul can break too
The mind’s activity enhances the body’s life. How then can we invigorate the mind and soul even as we cradle the brittle bones? In large custom-designed buildings, made for the elderly. But even the largest building is only a microcosm of experience, and the world outside brings emotional fresh air, so where can the elderly keep their minds alive, even as they want to travel less?
In cities.
Not just cities but modern cities, twenty-first century cities. Thirty years ago, the cities were dying. Prognosis critical. Industry and jobs and wealth were fleeing to the suburbs. Today, with information technology, environmental cleanups, new urbanism — in short, with the cities’ extraordinary revival — people are flocking back to cities as they once did, the clever and the aspirational and the powerful and the wealthy. And the elderly.
For the elderly, the migration is not just inward, but also upward: upward into high-rises, where elevators, long corridors, and gentle ramps ease and enable travel that is near in distance but far in experience.
A community rising?
We thus find the urban renaissance attracting its most fragile, and therefore its most hesitant, arrivals, the affluent elderly:
When Dick Harris retired 16 years ago, he and his wife, Lynne, moved first to
“Having worked all my life in major cities, I’m looking forward to getting back to community activities,” said Mr. Harris, 77, a former president of the radio group at Westinghouse Broadcasting.
These high-rises are built for them:
The Clare is a continuing-care retirement community, a type of senior housing that offers residents access to independent living, assisted living and skilled nursing care in the same complex.
I’ve been interested in elderly housing and congregate care for over twenty years, ever since I wrote a Real Estate Review article on the subject. Demography has always predicted such facilities would succeed, but the prediction’s fulfillment is long overdue:
Most of these communities — the number increased to 2,240 in 2005 from 274 in the early 1980s, according to the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging — consist of several buildings, and are found in suburban or rural settings.
Yet the elderly don’t want to live in the suburbs. They don’t want lawns and little boys whacking croquet balls into their back yards shattering teacups out of their hands. They don’t want teenagers parking in the lanes behind them. They don’t want to unclog gutters and downspouts, to worry about break-ins or gas bills or real estate tax appeals. They don’t want all that fuss. They want — friends and experiences and safety and ideas.
In cities.
Stimulate the senses, stimulate the mind
But now a growing number of such retirement communities, many developed by nonprofit organizations, are coming to cities. About 15 continuing-care communities are planned or under construction in city neighborhoods, said Kathryn L. Brod, a former director of continuing care for the association and now a senior vice president for Ziegler, a senior living finance company. “There is increased interest in doing CCRC’s in urban environments,” she said.
Which cities lead? Those that connote and embrace intellectual activity:
There are communities in
There are only about 30 urban continuing-care retirement communities, many built in the 1980s, according to Joan Annett, who handles senior living financing for the Cain Brothers, an investment banking firm.
An old real estate truism says that in new asset classes, it’sonly the third owner who makes money, for the first two fail. I suspect many of those Eighties’ vintage CCRC’s are on their third owner — and they will probably need retrofits. As
Featuring hotel-style amenities and services, the new metropolitan retirement communities have expensive entry fee and monthly maintenance charges and are a response to an expanding market of affluent and active retirees.
More than a name on the door on the thirty-third floor in the air, more than a credit card, more akin to a residence or concierge-based model.
“You could have been more.”
The communities also represent another stage in the nation’s urban renaissance, which has attracted an influx of empty nesters and young professionals over the last decade.
The first returners have always been the younger childless, those whose adventure channeled their penury into the urban homesteading fixer-upper. Now, as the Boomers hit retirement, the cities have in parallel been pacified enough to accommodate them:
“People are moving back into cities to take advantage of the convenience and amenities they have to offer,” said Randal J.
Next year, Classic Residence will break ground on its first inner-city continuing-care community; it will be in
Upscale + affluence = specialized development.
That works fine for the top of the income pyramid. What about the remaining 90% whose minds are as good but whose wallets are slimmer. Enter the non-profits:
[Continued tomorrow in Part 2.]
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