It’s what residents at St. Elizabeth village at Hamilton Mountain in Ontario, Canada, will be doing after Forrec, the creator of Legoland, Universal Studios Florida and Canada’s Wonderland, signed up to re-design their retirement community – at a cost of $800 million.
The 114-acre site, which is home to around 900 residents, will be transformed a pastoral mill town, complete with a spinning water wheel, old-time windmill and a population of 3,000.
The idea came from president Tony DiFruscio after his company took over the property in 2014. After speaking to residents about how they could revamp the 30-year-old village while preserving its “feel”, he thought of Disney’s Boardwalk, a shopping, dining and nightlife district in Florida.
Weaving a story
That led him to the Toronto-based company, which designs each of its projects around a theme.
For St. Elizabeth, the developer turned to the fact that the region was home to a number of mills and came up with a story about a mill owner settling the land which began the town.
The design shows new buildings and remodelled townhouses sitting around a central town square with restaurants and shops that will be open to the public and residents.
“We don’t like to call it a ‘retirement community,’” Forrec CEO Gordon Dorrett said. “As soon as you say that, you think it’s a bunch of old people sitting on couches watching TV. And that’s the exact opposite of what we’re working on.”
Resorts, not retirement
Instead, the project is billed as a ‘resort’ on their site, alongside luxurious resorts in Mexico, Singapore and Thailand and their previous village project in Florida.
Founded in 1995, ‘The Villages’ has grown into three themed communities with 55,000 homes and more than 120,000 residents.
Though the St. Elizabeth project is expected to take about a decade to finish, work is already underway with plans to open the first stage by the end of 2017.
With 80 per cent of new housing demand set to come from retirees by 2030[1], Forrec’s executive vice-president Steve Rhys says they are simply leading the way.
“The boomer population doesn’t think they are getting older,” he says. “They are looking for places that have a buzz of activities, and it’s amazing for them to see that can be made into reality.”
[1] ‘Retirement Homes The Future of Canada’s Housing Market?’ – The Conference Board of Canada, September 2011
