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Don’t Ignore Land Planning When Developing Your Active Adult Community

The hot buttons for today’s 55+ buyers moving into active adult communities include first-floor living and having the latest technology in their homes. These and other preferences for specific architectural elements in this market niche have commanded plenty of attention.

But relatively little consideration has been given to how active adult buyers respond to land planning. As the competition to attract market share becomes more intense, the ability to make your community more attractive through land planning and design can give you an edge.

Here are three simple land planning concepts to consider when developing your active adult community:

Pay special attention to the environment.

Many 55+ home buyers, especially boomers, are interested in protecting environmentally sensitive or attractive areas that can enhance their overall quality of life. Having a feeling of living in harmony with nature provides a sense of security and peacefulness and projects a community image of maturity and sustainability. Understanding these concepts and using them to benefit your project is an effective way to add to your community’s value.

Environmentally sensitive areas include wetlands and marshes, significant individual trees or forest stands, steep slopes (over 20%), 100- and 500-year floodplains, water courses and water bodies and locally or regionally recognized landscapes such as painted deserts and prairies. Properly incorporating protected areas into your community design can help differentiate your community by creating a “sense of place” and uniqueness.

Carefully planning the street network and clustering housing to avoid disturbing these areas will not only make for a more interesting community, it could lower your development costs. Avoiding sensitive spaces often reduces permitting requirements and can also trim your landscaping costs. Yearly maintenance of natural areas costs about $75 per acre versus $250 per acre for lawn and landscaped areas.

In addition to the up-front savings, you also can achieve long-term benefits through higher price points and resale value. Lots bordering or within close proximity to open space achieved through cluster design sell at premiums that range from 5%-32% over conventional developments. These same lots also appreciate in value approximately 12% faster.

Provide ample community spaces for residents.

Many people selling their 30-year-old homes and moving into a resort-style community may now want a socially and physically active lifestyle — one they don’t necessarily have to work so hard to achieve. Consequently, some developers have created and are marketing a “cruise ship” lifestyle for their communities, a lifestyle where residents have more activities to choose from than they can possibly do, and where they can pursue those activities with other people their own age. This requires incorporating a variety of community spaces in your land planning.

Creating convenient common areas that enable residents to congregate, while also providing multiple levels of privacy, enclosure and intimacy, is an easy way to enhance the community. These areas include interior and exterior spaces, and all should be within easy walking distance. When locating smaller spaces near each residence, take into consideration the sun and the space’s orientation, among other things. Also, take advantage of indoor and outdoor views as well as views within the community and more distant views.

Integrate architecture and land planning before developing your community.

Open space and land planning and design should be integrated with your architecture, not developed in a vacuum. After all, active adults will be living in homes, not these outdoor spaces. It’s important to consider the unit types and examine how building spaces relate to the outdoor environment. Transitioning into the outdoors from specific interior spaces (especially in warmer climates), the width of the house, window placement, individual patio and deck spaces and the orientation to the sun are important criteria. All these factors should be considered prior to proceeding with detailed land planning.

Proper integration of the building and site will result in a project that blends into its surroundings, provides a sense of privacy and security and can make the lives of its residents more enjoyable.