Five Tips About How to Create Lifestyle for Active Adults - 1/10/2005 - Home Remodeling Interior Decorating Design

Five Tips About How to Create Lifestyle for Active Adults

David Jensen, a member of the NAHB Seniors Housing Council, will be conducting architectural plan reviews at the 2005 International Builders' Show in Orlando, FL.

The sheer volume of 55+ buyers is awe-inspiring. Forecasters place their numbers in the tens of millions by 2010. They are the largest group of home buyers today. They have enormous purchasing power.

So, you want a piece of this action?

First, keep in mind that when targeting active adults, lifestyle often outweighs the house itself. For many, retirement may be several years away, but they are not only looking to purchase their retirement homes now at today’s prices, they also seek a lifestyle that will reflect their future way of life.

With that as the context, here are five tips on how to package lifestyle into your communities so you stand out among the competition:

More Than a House on a Lot

Designing communities for the active adult lifestyle requires a more comprehensive approach than simply plunking houses down on lots. You can virtually guarantee sales success if you begin the planning process with a consumer-oriented approach. This requires a thorough understanding of the home buying process.

For example, potential buyers in a master-planned community may travel around half the development site looking at your community’s structure, safety features, recreation offerings, amenities, lot layout and more before walking into any of the models or homes to examine the architecture or floor plans.

Because active adults purchase community lifestyle more than any other age group, community designers should treat each step of the community plan as another opportunity to positively shape the buyer’s first impression. Blending planning concepts and sales and marketing techniques is a fundamental element of community design.

On the Left We Have…Lifestyle

I firmly believe that the community sale actually is made at the community’s primary lifestyle focal point — the one grand view where the community’s lifestyle is on full display.

Many communities designed by my firm lead buyers down a transitional road from the entry gate to a T-intersection. There, potential buyers are encouraged to stop and take in the surroundings where they’ll see many amenities strategically placed to wow them and paint a picture of the community’s ultimate lifestyle. After they get the big picture, they can explore the community and see the other amenities or neighborhoods.

Lifestyle impressions can be crafted through extravagant architecture or simply rely on the site’s natural topography to impress. Lake Las Vegas — a $4 billion, 5,000-acre residential and resort development surrounding a 320-acre lake — features a magnificent town center reminiscent of an Italian piazza with walkways, cafes, outdoor seating areas and fountains. It sparks the imagination and communicates a fun, outdoor social lifestyle.

The Vineyards at Westchase, an 18-acre infill community in Hillsborough County, FL, projects a vastly different lifestyle. Environmental preservation was an important element of the community’s development, so the lifestyle focus shifted to the site’s natural features. The project team nestled variegated foliage among towering cypress trees and along the large lake. The design team also constructed a gazebo and boardwalk to provide easy access to the natural surroundings and provide leisure spots for bird watching.

Reveling in Success

A community’s lifestyle will reflect the buyers’ self images. Remember, active adults look for a home or community that showcases their success. To capture and keep their interest, plan a community that reflects that success through images, character and lifestyle and is readily identifiable from the moment they arrive at the entrance. Emphasize social and recreational opportunities (not mowing the lawn) and a low-maintenance lifestyle that reduces the hassles of homeownership.

Ooh, the Nostalgia

Nostalgia is important to many active adults, so homes and communities should take prospects back to a place they might have visited — or wanted to visit — in the past. Lake Las Vegas has a Tuscan theme because Tuscany is a popular vacation spot for many of the community’s residents. Tuscan and other Italian elements were delicately woven throughout the entire community — from the village town center to the tile roofing of the guardhouse and the streetlamp design.

Good for the Heart

As you probably know, active adults’ favorite form of exercise is walking. Don’t forget this when designing your community. Provide walking trails to connect your buyers to specialty retail, wellness centers, libraries and hobby shops. Central trail systems link the amenities and promote walking, biking and alternative modes of transportation.

To achieve maximum walk-ability, I suggest reversing the typical design process. Break from juxtaposing houses with roads and then filling in the blanks with sidewalks. Instead, first draw the open space, trails and walkways after all the environmental set-asides are made. Then refine the remaining development space with roads positioned to conform to that space. That way, curvilinear streets will replace monotonous grid streets, slow traffic, display elegant community landscape focals and encourage a walkable lifestyle.

Creating communities for active adults is a sophisticated process. Learn the sales and marketing elements, revisit your plan and tweak it so that the community’s fabric has an appealing function, lifestyle and image. Recognize active adults’ hobbies and desires and pepper images of a rewarding lifestyle throughout the community. Your attention to detail will pay off.

David Jensen is president of the Denver-based David Jensen Associates, Inc., which specializes in active adult and mixed-use master-planned communities. The company's award-winning communities rely on parks, open space and trail systems to create structure and a sense of place. For more information, e-mail Jensen, or call him at 303-369-7369.