By Hayden Spiess
DALLAS — Although tenant demand for active adult communities remains strong, the sector is not immune to escalating construction costs, labor shortages, tariffs and general economic uncertainty, say industry professionals. Teamwork across key disciplines can help make clearing those hurdles much easier.
“We’re having a hard time getting things to pencil these days,” levels Erin Berry Harps, director of interior design at Direct Supply Aptura, a senior living design and construction firm. Simultaneously, residents are as price conscious as ever, he points out. “We also have increased consumer demand for affordability,” emphasizes Harps.
Harp’s assessment came during the 5th annual InterFace Active Adult conference, which was held Wednesday, May 7, at The Westin Las Colinas in Dallas. Harps moderated a panel titled “Architecture, Design & Construction Trends for Active Adult Projects” at the daylong event, which attracted over 290 industry professionals.
In addition to Harps, the panel discussion included Bill Foster, a partner with Lantz-Boggio Architects; Lisa Warnock, principal and founder of Glow Interior Designs; Jarrett Cooper, vice president at Rosemann & Associates; and Claire Richards, principal and director of the multifamily and hospitality studio at interior design firm StudioSix5.
Foster Teamwork From the Get-Go
The keys to balancing the concerns outlined by Harps are exceptional architecture and design. According to panelists, early communication and cooperation among the various members of the overall team planning and executing new community developments are crucial. Early integration can enable team members to benefit from one another’s expertise, as well as avoid changes to the development plans at later stages, saving time and costs.
“Get those surprises fleshed out early,” advised Foster. “Surprises are great for birthday presents, but they’re no good in performance.”
“Having the team together early is really important, and having the entire team early really helps a lot,” agreed Cooper.
This focus on collaboration should include the operator that will ultimately manage the community upon opening, argued Richards. “You definitely want operations,” she asserted, in answer to moderator Harps’s question about who should be “at the table” when getting ready to start a project.
“You want operations to look at how they’re going to staff [the senior living facility], how they’re going to lease it and how they’re going to run it,” said Cooper, noting that these considerations influenced decisions such as the number of offices included in a community.
Location, Location, Location
As much as thoughtful design and architectural planning affects the resulting product and its success, panelists said that one of the most important and impactful decisions comes before that process begins in the form of site selection.
“Site is key,” noted Richards. She purported that this is especially true of active adult communities relative to other segments of senior living.
“Active adult, for the most part, is not staffed like independent living, assisted living or memory care,” she explained. “The more surrounding amenities you can leverage for your residents— where there are salons nearby, restaurants nearby — the less that you have to build into your infrastructure and staff and operate.”
Location can in turn inform the design of active adult communities, as designers take into consideration the amount of outdoor and urban amenities surrounding a given project, as well as local demographics.
“Active adult is a lifestyle choice,” Cooper pointed out. “What we need to do as designers is help make sure that the lifestyle is correct for the area. You’ve got to figure out what your demographic is really looking for and what the lifestyle is that’s going to be the most important for the resident in that development.”
Foster echoed the importance of resident desires and interests, adding that “you need to design around things people love.”
Variety Is Spice of Active Adult Life
For Harps’s parents, these interests include beekeeping, welding and playing in a rock band. She joked that they are a “handful” and that she needed active adult communities to appeal to them and their hobbies. “I don’t want them to come live with me,” she laughed.
Though other panelists jested about the improbability and liability of accommodating those specific pastimes, all agreed that allowing for the individualization of both the active adult experience and physical spaces is crucial.
“We need to tailor the space so that they feel that sense of belonging,” said Foster. “We need to make those spaces flexible because our communities really need to adapt throughout the week and throughout the years. We’re going to have multiple cycles of residents, and we need to be able to have different activities happen during the week.”
Selecting the right furniture is an important detail that is easy for designers to overlook, said Richards. “One of the biggest learning curves for us when we first started designing these 10 years ago is that [residents] move furniture around all the time,” she shared. “It’s got to be durable. They push the tables together; they pull them apart.”
Warnock concurred. “We are putting it on the residents to create a lot of their own programs,” she emphasized. “We can plan the furniture for that.”
Ultimately, it is important to remember that all elements of the architecture and design are in service of a singular mission: improving the lives of residents.
“All the different levels of lighting, different seating groups, little pockets of experiences, the level of service and all those things…make you feel like you have come to a place where you’re welcome and it feels like home, but a nicer, better version,” Richards summarized. “That’s kind of what we try and bring to our projects.”