The tide is turning. Retirement villages are heading upwards – into the sky – as apartment blocks, located in middle and inner metropolitan areas.
And with this emerging trend, the days of new gated communities, with 150 homes located on 10 ha of land with lush landscapes and generous facilities are numbered.
Stockland, Lend Lease, Freemasons and Anglican Retirement Villages are among the many village operators that are heading towards medium rise apartments.
This movement will impact people who traditionally will be leaving a generous family home, complete with a garden and room to move. They will have to downsize to apartment living: a different way of life.
These new retirement apartments will have a village manager but rather than looking after a big village with gardeners and maintenance people, the village manager’s role will be to provide a ‘concierge style’ service, much like the role that a concierge plays in a hotel or public building. That is, someone whose role is to organise and coordinate activities and home care support, as well as provide general assistance to residents.
To many this more personal, individual support-style service will be a new advantage that apartment living offers ahead of the traditional village where the resident is often left to their own devices to organise support services.
Urban design, urban locations
New retirement apartment buildings will also be more centrally located to shops, medical centres and transport, thanks to local council zoning for medium and high rise buildings. This will be an added bonus over the traditional village which is often located further away from this community infrastructure.
The new architecture of modern apartment developments will also surprise new residents.
A great example is a village in Brisbane developed by father and son village operators, Michael and Justin Harrison. Their Cooparoo village was named the Winner of the 2014 National Urban Development Institute of Australia President’s Award for Best Development. That is, the best residential development for the whole of Australia. You can see The Village Cooparoo HERE.
Looking ahead, new ‘horizontal’ villages will probably only be built in regional areas where land is cheaper and where potential village residents will be downsizing from family homes that have bigger gardens and generous space. Otherwise, chances are that you will be ‘moving up’.
