8 quirky retirement communities - ShantiNiketan

Jan. 22, 2013, 7:01 a.m. EST
8 quirky retirement communities
Homes for RV nuts, theater buffs, and…postal workers?
By Catey Hill
Aspiring Hemingways, die-hard recreational-vehicle fans, Harley-obsessed boomers: If you’re feeling a little uninspired about your
retirement options (another community based around a golf course? Really?), you’re in luck. A new breed of retirement community is
catering to those whose interests lie a little outside the mainstream.
The number of retirement communities that serve a specific niche, a group of people that share a common background or interest, is on the rise.
University-based retirement communities, for example, offer senior living facilities that are located on, and integrated into, college campuses. These
communities, which attract aging intellectuals and self-improvers who want continuing education opportunities, have grown from almost none 15 years
ago to around 50 currently, says Andrew Carle, an assistant professor at George Mason University who specializes in senior housing.
Universities, of course, cater to a fairly broad range of interests. But as the niche-community idea has
caught on, communities have sprouted up to serve more narrowly-defined groups.
ShantiNiketan, a community for aging Indian-Americans in Florida, opened its doors in 2010 (and an
expansion is currently under way).
Oakmont Senior Living, which owns 34 retirement communities, opened its first community for gays and
lesbians in 2011. And NoHo Senior Artists Community, for writers, actors and other artists, opened just
last December.
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“Boomers have already sparked an explosion of products—why would it be any different with
retirement?” says Carle. “The critical mass is there and boomers want to do a lot of what they love when
they retire.”
Or, as Neil Schuster, founder of niche community Lake Weir Living, puts it: “The typical cookie-cutter gated community is oversaturated…a lot of
people just don’t want that.”
Some developers have found that some retirees are willing to pay a little more to live in the company of like-minded people; and targeting their
community to a specific niche makes marketing easier, too.
To be sure, not everyone wants to organize their lives around a certain group or a specific activity, and there is a risk of getting sick of the niche you
pick. (RV living may be great, but do you really want to spend your entire retirement in a 40-foot-long box?)
And research from Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, author of “Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide,” suggests that people who
spend a ton of time around like-minded people tend to get more extreme in their views about people who don’t share their opinions.
That said, these experiments in group living can give pre-retirees a sense of just how many different ways there are to structure a retirement. Here
are eight of the most unusual retirement communities in America.
NOHO Senior Arts Colony
NoHo Senior Artists Colony
The brand-new NoHo Senior Artists Colony is a community for those 62 and up in the trendy North Hollywood neighborhood; it was created
exclusively for artists. Being that it’s Hollywood, most of the current residents are writers and actors, but it’s open to anyone who has a desire to be
artsy. Noho is built adjacent to a performing arts theater that plays host to the well-regarded Road Theatre Company. Residents of the community get
to use the theater when there are no professional shows running, and some of the actors in the theater company live in the community. The NoHo
colony doesn’t simply give a nod to arts: In addition to artists’ studios, the community offers an array of educational programs. “The arts classes and
programs can culminate in a performance or publishing or creating a film,” says Tim Carpenter, founder and executive director of EngAGE, a
nonprofit devoted to turning senior apartment communities into vibrant places to live. “We want people to achieve a goal.” Though only a handful of
residents have joined Noho thus far (it just opened last month), the management expects roughly 150 to move in within the next year or so.
Lake Weir Living
Whoever said retirement was about slowing down clearly hadn’t met the residents of Lake Weir Living, a “toy-friendly” boomer community in central
Florida—built around the idea that no kinds of community restrictions should keep retirees from enjoying (or parking) their RVs, motorcycles, boats or
vintage Buicks. Here you’ll find boomers whose lives revolve around hopping on their Harley or into their hot rod (their “adult toys”) and whizzing
around town for a Sunday drive, thrill-seeker style. The community offers customizable homes (20 have been built so far, with room on site for more
than 1,500 more) with the option for a five-car garage or even a 50-foot garage customized for an RV, so residents can keep all their toys safe in one
place. Plus, the community sits amid roads and rolling hills and near a national forest and the beach, which Schuster claims offers residents “the best
scenic riding in the state.”
The community is right by The Villages—a massive retirement community big enough to take up multiple ZIP Codes—so residents have plenty of
fellow retirees nearby. Home prices for the community start in the low $100,000 range, and currently about 50 people live there.
Escapees CARE
For avid RVers, life is a highway—that is, until life forces you to “hang up your keys” for a while. Enter Escapees CARE. At this facility in Livingston,
Texas, visitors can park their RV on the grounds and get nursing care, meals, and more on site. “We like to not be tied down to one place, so we’ve
created a program here where you can come in on a month-to-month basis if you want,” says Russ Johnson, the facilities director. For example, if an
RV lover has surgery and can’t get around that well, but doesn’t want to have to recuperate in a nursing home, he or she can pop over to Escapees
CARE; residents are welcome to stay longer, even for years if they’d like. Prices for one of the 35 spots average about $850 a month, with which you
get nursing care from 9 to 5 Monday through Friday, transportation to doctor appointments, and three meals a day plus snacks. Just remember, it’s
BYORV (bring your own RV).
National Association of Letter Carriers
Nalcrest
Hey there, Mr. (or Ms.) Postalworker. Wondering where you’re going to retire? Nalcrest, a retirement community founded in the early 1960s in south
central Florida, was built exclusively for postal workers. “Before the strike of 1970, wages for letter carriers were very low; in New York City some of us
were even on food assistance,” says Tom Young, who handles operations for Nalcrest. “So the idea behind Nalcrest was to create an affordable
place for letter carriers to retire.” Even today, this community charges a maximum rent of just $520 per month, which includes the home, utilities other
than electricity, and grounds maintenance. There are 500 one-story apartments with around 700 residents, as well as a recently renovated pool,
shuffleboard and bocce ball courts, a 75-acre lake (for fishing, kayaking and boating) and a small restaurant.
ShantiNiketan
When you look around ShantiNiketan, you won’t find the usual retirement community amenities like a pool or tennis courts—and that’s how residents
here like it. ShantiNiketan, near Orlando, caters to Indian Americans 55 and over, and its unique features reflect their cultural preferences. “Indians
like to sit and chat and watch Indian movies or walk outside,” says Jeffrey Ignatius, who founded the community with his father Iggy in 2010. “They
aren’t really into swimming.” The community also has an on-site prayer room and extensive vegetarian cuisine options. Home prices range from
$160,000 to $180,000, and monthly fees, which include utilities, property taxes, homeowners’ association dues and an optional meal plan, are less
than $1,000 per month. The community thus far has sold out, but Phase 2 with 112 more buildings will open by 2014.
Lasell Village
There are retirement communities on college campuses—and then there is Lasell Village. Here, you are not merely encouraged to take classes, you
are required to—to the tune of 450 hours of classes a year at Lasell College, ranging from French cinema to social psychology to current events to
fitness and volunteer work. (You can take classes with your peers or with students at the college.) “Each of our 16 buildings has a classroom,” says
Paula Panchuck, the vice president of the village. “The architecture here literally supports our mission.” Of course, the 200 residents at the Newton,
Mass. community also enjoy other activities, from swimming in the heated pool to Pilates in the community room. Lasell Village is a continuing care
retirement community, which means it offers independent and assisted living, as well as nursing care. Entrance fees start at $300,000 for a onebedroom apartment and monthly fees start at $3,100.
AegisLiv ing.com
Aegis Gardens
When the team at retirement community management company Aegis Living saw the plans for Aegis Gardens, a community for Chinese Americans
near San Francisco, they loved them. The designers envisioned a blue and white color scheme, a grand staircase leading toward the front door in
the main building, a beautiful fountain in the middle of the community. Aegis’s consultants from the Chinese community, however, were less
enthusiastic. Turns out, white is associated with death in China, and the staircase and sharp angles of the fountain were interfering with the building’s
chi, or vital energy. The Aegis team reworked the entire plan before finally opening the facility in 2001. Now residents enjoy a Feng Shui-designed
facility with staff that speak a variety of Chinese dialects; popular activities include Tai Chi, calligraphy classes and mah-jongg. Aegis Living is building
a second community near Seattle, which is set to open in 2014.
Glacier Circle Community Association
About a decade ago, Stan Dawson, his wife Peggy and some of their (mostly retired) Unitarian church friends got to talking about what they were
going to do as they got older. The close-knit group soon realized that there was nothing out there that resembled what they wanted—a very small
community where each member had an equal say in decisions about the community such as handling repairs, architectural design and landscaping.
So they decided to create their own. It took a few years, and a lot of permits and meetings, but in 2005, the group officially opened Glacier Village, a
senior cohousing community in Davis, Calif.
Cohousing communities are made up of a cluster of individual homes with shared common space, in which all residents actively participate in the
management of the community; like a commune, but with separate homes and amenities. There are more than 100 cohousing communities in the
U.S., says Sandra Timmerman, the director of the MetLife Mature Market Institute, but Glacier was the first senior cohousing community in this
country. Glacier Village is made up of eight homes on a shared plot of land; all 11 residents (their average age is now about 82) attend a weekly
meeting, share dinners three nights a week (they’ve hired a cook for that) and enjoy amenities like a bocce court and lake. Monthly dues pay for the
upkeep of the land, housekeeping, shared meals and other services.
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