When it comes to athletics, Steve Detrick can run circles around most of his neighbors: He’s a wicked in-line skater, jogs without breaking a sweat and manages 18 holes of golf several days a week.
No, Detrick doesn’t live next to a bunch of couch potatoes. The 46-year-old just retired — to an adult community in McCormick, S.C.
“Every once and a while, I feel a little out of place here,” says Detrick, a former design engineer from Ohio. “Sometimes, I get picked on for being young.”
There goes the retirement community. Burned out by work and tired of suburbia, well-heeled forty- and fifty-something Baby Boomers are rushing into the planned living developments, the same kinds of places where they once would have sent their parents.
The middle-agers are attracted not only by well-groomed golf courses and upgraded housing stock, but also by organized activities more likely found at a Club Med, such as tai chi, wall-climbing and kick-boxing classes.
For bona fide senior citizens, this isn’t exactly good news. After all, Boomers are still kids to them — the kind of people who throw beer bashes and bonfires, organize late-night karaoke parties and ride around on Harleys.
“It’s just too much running around,” complains Jim McGarr, 71, who recently bought a house in a retirement community in West Hartford, Conn., and is worried about his noisy junior neighbors. “They haven’t learned how to relax.”
Generational warfare wasn’t exactly what developers envisioned when they decided to lure aging empty-nesters into retirement communities. They simply saw a business opportunity.
With 76 million Boomers out there — many just starting to hit retirement age — marketing to a younger generation just made economic sense. By tailoring the homes to Boomers’ tastes — with everything from marble floors to SurroundSound stereo systems to his-and-hers bathrooms — they bet they could reel in middle-agers and expand their market.
In some places, the strategy is already paying off.
Del Webb Corp., Phoenix, has increased its home sales by 29 percent in the last five years, in part by focusing on early-retiring Boomers.
In its adult communities, Hovnanian Corp., Red Bank, N.J., has seen the number of home-buying retirees ages 55 and under double in just five years, up to one-fifth of their sales.
Indeed, there’s lots of room to grow: In the hottest retirement areas like Nevada and the Carolinas, senior communities already account for up to 20 percent of all new home sales.
“I don’t think anyone has built a shuffleboard (court) in 10 years,” says Jean Moreau, of Jean Moreau and Associates, in Columbia, Md., a firm that advises retirement-community builders. “It’s more about roller-blading and hiking now.”
There was a time when most adult communities almost always refused to admit residents under 55. Those which accepted government funding hewed closely to a law which allowed only 20 percent of the residents to be under 55 — mostly to accommodate younger wives, children caring for elderly parents and other exceptions.
Now, some of the government-funded communities are becoming more flexible with their age limits, while those that don’t get government funds are courting younger and younger buyers.
The middle-aged crowd, in turn, is signing up in droves, both to take advantage of the lifestyle luxuries, and to lock up a place to retire before real estate prices rise beyond their means.
Indeed, in the current uncertain economy, many of these communities are actually a bargain. While a few places offer homes in the $500,000 to $1 million range, the average 2,100-square-foot home in an adult community runs more in the $200,000 range.
Developers, eager to cash in on the trend, have increased their construction of adult-living communities. Del Webb, the biggest player in the market, spent 43 percent more on construction this year than it did in 1998.
Fancy amenities, however, are no substitute for a sense of fun — something Candy Clark thinks her elderly neighbors are lacking at the Sun Lakes Community in Phoenix.
This summer, when Mrs. Clark, 54, signed up for a “40s/50s” pool party — with aging Boomers wailing Beatles and Tom Jones tunes on a karaoke system — she was startled to learn that a Sun Lakes employee warned the group ahead of time to keep the noise down.
“We like to party more than the older folks,” says Mrs. Clark.
This isn’t just a question of a few rowdy get-togethers. As the most coddled and studied generation in American history, many Boomers see their move into the adult communities as a lifestyle choice, not a rite of passage. They’re sometimes taken aback when their new neighbors have a different point of view.
Take Tricia Gale, who recently retired to Sun City Grand, in Surprise, Ariz. When the 46-year-old former hair stylist first moved in, she dressed as she did in Chicago: in the latest fashions. But after drawing stares and glares from women and men alike, she revamped her wardrobe.
“I only dress sexy at home for my husband anymore,” complains Mrs. Gale.
Of course, retirement communities haven’t been entirely overrun by underage whippersnappers. Though the average age in many places is falling, 60-plus seniors still dominate the neighborhoods.
That is especially true in the adult communities that receive money from the government. In some places, the elderly so dominate the communities that the token Boomers refer to them as “Q-Tips,” a reference to all the heads of white hair.
Still, coming face to face with mortality can be trying. When Mary-Anne Christian first moved into a New Jersey retirement community two years ago, she felt like she was always “looking in the face of death.”
These days, Mrs. Christian, 58, is less depressed about such issues, but worries about her neighbors. One recent morning, an elderly woman driver hit four other cars on her way out to the grocery store.
“They had to call the cops,” says Mrs. Christian.
Of course, some older folk actually like having younger retirees around.
Norma Racke, 68, a resident of Tellico Village in Loudoun, Tenn., says the mixture of seniors and Boomers makes the community seem like one big extended family. For her, “The younger people add spice and energy.”
