Wade, a native Alabamian and 1974 graduate of the University of Alabama, says he has every intention of returning to the school’s Tuscaloosa campus to retire at a CRSA-owned and -managed project called Capstone Village. “It makes a lot of sense for a college to want its well-heeled alumni on campus,” he says, explaining that many schools hope that as older alumni plan their estates, they will be encouraged to leave financial bequests to the university.
But Wade admits that attracting alumni to university-related senior housing communities in smaller towns such as Tuscaloosa can be challenging. He points to CRSA’s first university-related project, the Village at Penn State in State College, Pa. “One of the things we learned is that smaller communities are a more difficult sell than we thought they would be,” he says.
“We’ve found that the draw for these types of projects is more from retired faculty and staff and parents of faculty and staff,” says David Jones, project director of Kendal Corp., a Kennett Square, Pa.-based nonprofit developer and operator of campus-adjacent senior communities. “The alumni draw is not as strong as some people would make it out to be.”
Nonetheless, developers are eager to take on more of these projects down the line. “Any developer, whether for profit or nonprofit, would want to do a project like this because of the advantages of reducing the market risk,” Johnson says. “The university affiliation adds credibility to the project.”
MIX AND MINGLE
The intergenerational nature of university-adjacent housing has some asking, “What about those keg parties?” When most people think of college campuses, sorority socials and keg parties often come to mind. Rarely do they think of senior housing, yet many colleges have older adults living on campus close to the young folks.
How do the two generations mix? Dr. David Shi, president of Furman University, says there was some concern that a senior housing project on campus might “compromise the underclassman experience.” However, he contends that the school’s campus in Greenville, S.C., is large enough to accommodate senior housing without significantly impacting undergraduate living.
Lasell College in Newton, Mass., addressed concerns about mixing generations by requiring that residents in its senior housing project Lasell Village participate in at least 450 hours of learning and fitness activity each year.
“While we determined that there would be challenges to mixing the generations, we defined the circumstances under which older adults could be here on campus,” explains Paula Panchuck, executive director of Lasell Village. “The educational requirement caused the two communities to have a lot in common.” Some 225 residents live in Lasell Village, which includes Lasell House, a 38-bed skilled nursing facility that has a 100-name waiting list.
“It’s not normal to isolate people based on age—that’s not how we live the majority of our lives,” says Stephen Bardoczi, senior vice president of planning and real estate for Franciscan Sisters of Chicago Service Corp., which is building a senior housing project on Loyola University’s downtown Chicago campus. “Intergenerational environments are important because older adults miss the interaction with other generations and end up feeling isolated when they don’t have it. College campuses provide interaction of multiple generations.”