Tomorrowville

Community Comments

24-HOUR PILATES AND CONCIERGE

The amenities at the newer age-restricted communities have expanded as well. It’s no longer simply shuffleboard, golf or bridge. Now the communities offer Pilates, yoga, softball, volleyball, bocce ball and cooking and fitness clubs that are open 24 hours a day to accommodate working members. Some 65 percent of residents of  The Club have a member of the household still working. The Club also offers a concierge to help these busy active adults book tickets to the theater, set up group kayaking trips or find a drapery store or decorator. The larger WestPark project also has lots of walking paths and open spaces. Eventually, it will offer some retail.

Sandra Rosenbloom, a professor of planning and gerontology at the University of Arizona who researches and writes extensively on retirement and its impact on land use, says communities such as The Club, with walking paths, proximity to public services and multi-generational homes, are the exception, not the norm. Too many active adult communities are built in remote areas where land is cheap.

“My sense is that is a tiny fraction of the housing that is available to older people,” says Rosenbloom. “That should be more the model.”

Christopher Leinberger, a visiting fellow at The Brookings Institution and a real-estate professor at the University of Michigan, says the “walkability” of developments is something that more and more boomers — and people of all ages — are demanding. They want an urban feel to their communities even if they are in suburbia. He calls it “walkable urbanism.”

Boomers who are in pre-retirement mode are moving to these areas now, says Leinberger. Some of the communities are in actual urban centers where lofts and condo projects are sprouting up. Others are in new “lifestyle centers” where developers have built faux main streets, with housing, office space and hotels above retail stores — often in suburban areas.

“They can walk down the street and go to great restaurants. There is a buzz on the streets instead of the great silence of the suburbs,” Leinberger says.

Developers also are finding that condominium and downtown loft projects in urban core areas are appealing to boomers who want to live in the city and walk to bookstores, restaurants and work. Sacramento has spawned numerous loft projects and condo projects in the inner city, including the North End Lofts at 14th and C streets, O1 Lofts on 16th Street, and the L Street Lofts. Washington Park Village boasts hip Midtown condos and, the proposed Aura Condos on Capitol Mall would bring hundreds more condos onto the scene.

West Sacramento also has become home to some urban projects that are attracting boomers, including Ironworks near Raley Field and Regatta at the River along the riverfront. The Pavilions villas, also condos, along Fulton Boulevard in Sacramento, is an upscale project that offers 2,200- to 2,500-sq.-ft. condos within walking distance of Borders Books, fancy restaurants and other trappings of the city.

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