Easy living, at $27,300 a month
Developers bet affluent senior citizens will pay for the best
Manhattan is about to become a testing ground for what could be the next luxury real estate boom. Well, maybe mini-boom, considering the rather narrow target group: frail urban senior citizens with fat bank accounts.
Developers are spending hundreds of millions on high-end assisted-living apartment projects, and aiming for more in the area and across the US. The bet is that there are enough people who are affluent and ageing in big cities who won't want to leave their neighbourhoods, even as they suffer cognitive decline.
It is a rather narrow group who can handle the rents such places will command. They'll start at US$12,000 ($16,380) a month at the complex that Maplewood Senior Living and Omega Healthcare Investors are putting up on Second Avenue and 93rd Street, New York. Some will top more than US$20,000 ($27,300) a month at the building Welltower and Hines are about to break ground for on the corner of 56th St and Lexington Ave.
They'll boast the usual luxury frills like uniformed doormen and lush gardens. But they'll also incorporate special features for the elderly and memory impaired, such as sharply contrasting wall colours in bathrooms to help those with poor eyesight identify fixtures, and hallway lighting designed to encourage sleep at night.
“We're seeing people who are in New York, wanting and demanding to live in New York, but there's really nothing available,” says Greg Smith, chief executive of Maplewood, which owns 13 senior communities, most of them in suburbia, and a 19ha farm from which it sources food for its properties.
And if there was ever a good time to dive into Manhattan, this could be it, with deluxe residences going begging and land values down 21 per cent so far this year, according to brokerage Cushman & Wakefield. Both Welltower and Maplewood are scout- ing for additional locations in New York and other major metropolitan areas, anticipating the so-called silver tsunami that will double the US population of 80-somethings in the next t wo decades. In f act, Maplewood's New York complex is the first in a planned international brand of boutique senior properties called Inspir that is considering sites in Los Angeles, Miami and London.
At the 23-storey, US$270 million Maplewood-Omega tower on the Upper East Side, residents will enjoy farm-to-table dining, a spa, a movie theatre and a “sky park” on the 16th floor that will feature a flower-lined walking path and a sun porch.
The upper range of rents will be at least triple the average US$6988 that Welltower charges at the rest of its US senior-housing portfolio.
Senior housing has traditionally been suburban-focused because land is so much cheaper outside cities, and developers hadn't seen a big enough market to justify paying more, and charging more, for urban locations, says Michael Knott, managing director at Green Street Advisors, a real estate research company.
But now, he says, many people living in cities have the means to pay a premium to remain in familiar environments.
To serve the wealthiest of them, developers are putting extra emphasis on finishes and flourishes, to make their facilities look like the places residents left behind.
At the Maplewood building, that will mean concierge-style caregiving, where staff won't wear clinicallooking clothing and will offer housekeeping and reservations to Broadway shows. Hines' design team uses an app to evaluate every pattern and colour choice through the eyes of someone who is ageing, says Sarah Hawkins, a managing director with the firm. Carpet colours and patterns also can't be too contrasting, because that might make it seem that the floor is moving.
A hallway handrail, required by law in all assisted-living centres, is camouflaged in paneling. Hall lights are timed to the body's circadian rhythms, glowing bluish in the morning to promote wakefulness and yellowish at night.
What's key, says DeRosa, is that the assisted-living complex look like something else to residents — “like a building that they're accustomed to.” So the exterior will be limestone blocks at the base and concrete poured to evoke the stone for the rest. The entrance courtyard will feature two walls carpeted in greenery, and a culinary consultant has been hired to advise on the mix of restaurants for a clientele accustomed to eating out as often as five nights a week.
“If you've lived your whole life in a limestone-clad building on the Upper East Side, this will not feel alien to you,” DeRosa says. “This building should feel like a seamless part of the community that someone would have experienced for the last 60 to 80 years.”