University-based Retirement Communities: Opportunities for Residents and Students

Welcome to the Living to 100 Club Podcast.

Here's our host, Dr. Joseph Casciani. Well, hello to everyone joining us today on our podcast. You're listening to the Living to 100 Club, and I'm your host, Joe Casciani. Before I introduce our guest, I'd like to remind everyone that I'm available for public speaking events, particularly to community organizations and senior groups. I love to talk to others about aging well, keeping a positive frame of mind, and making it over those hurdles. There's an option on my website to set up a call to arrange a presentation for your group. I also offer a free 30-minute lifestyle audit for individuals to look at lifestyle practices, attitudes, and outlook. This audit gives us an idea if one-on-one coaching with me may help to bounce back from challenges and setbacks. Set up a call with the button on my website to get started with this lifestyle audit. And one last item of self-promotion: if you're looking for a consultant or trainer on clinical topics, like dementia or depression, this is my wheelhouse. So feel free to contact me if there's a need in your organization. Contact options are on my website, again, livingto100.club. Now on to our podcast. Our guest today is Ashley Wade. Today's conversation highlights an innovative senior retirement community that is based on a college campus in Westchester County, New York. Ashley Wade is the Chief Executive Officer and Marketing Director of Broadview Senior Living. We discuss the benefits for seniors who decide to move to a university-based community and want to continue their education in their new living environment and build meaningful intergenerational friendships. This environment allows residents firsthand opportunity to audit courses exchange in cultural offerings, and foster healthy new relationships with students, faculty, and university staff. First, a little background. Ashley Wade has worked in senior living for more than 17 years with communities throughout the Midwest, including Sycamore Creek Senior Living, Friendship Village, and Hillhaven Retirement in Ohio, where she held regional and community marketing director positions. Managing sales, marketing teams, and executing advertising and public relations efforts. Ashley holds a Bachelor of Arts, Political Science from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She relocated to White Plains, New York from Central Ohio to join the Broadview team. Ashley is also an officially trained provider through the SageCare program a cultural competency training program organized by SAGE. Ashley, welcome to our podcast today.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Great, great. Glad you're here today and looking forward to our conversation. I always like to open by asking our guests to tell us a little bit about the journey that brought you to where you are today. I know I covered some of your, your work history, but how did you end up brought you?

Sure. So, I always say that I ended up in senior living, something for which I'm deeply passionate about now, but kind of on accident, by mistake, through the back door. I didn't set out to work with older adults, or obviously my degree is in political science, but I found myself working in public relations early in my career, just out of college. And we had a client that was a senior living community, and I found that there was a real affinity just working in the atmosphere and working especially with older adults. And I became curious about this chapter of hopefully everyone's lives. And the next thing I knew, I was no longer working for the public relations firm, but working for the community, and that started it. And then, by a curious twist of fate, I started working for a community in Granville, Ohio called Kendal at Granville that had a relationship with Denison University, still does. And I really enjoyed the dynamic that I witnessed between the older adults and the students on campus and the kind of engagement opportunities that then were, you know, became present. And I decided right then and there that I wanted to work in university-based communities. And ultimately that's what brought me to Broadview.

Yeah. Great. So Broadview is a senior living community on the campus of Purchase College. Where did the idea for a retirement community on this campus, State University of New York Purchase, the name of the school, SUNY at Purchase, where did this first come from? Where, who initiated the idea?

Sure, so, um, this is really more than a decade in the making, and I had heard about this through industry organization called LeadingAge that this was kind of percolating. So, if you're in the university-based retirement community space, you would have been hearing about this. And the story goes that more than a decade ago, the then-president, Tom Schwartz, of the University of Purchase College really was talking to his board of trustees and saying, you know, what do we have? What resource do we have on our campus that we could leverage for the long-term financial sustainability of the university? But that we could do in alignment with our mission as an educational institution. Purchase College was fortunate in that they already had a longstanding senior auditing program through the Great State of New York, where adults 62 and older can audit classes at a greatly reduced rate. It was very well subscribed on Purchase College campus. They said, well, there's an interest and a need in the area for older adults to engage in this lifelong learning. And he set out on a sabbatical and really visited many of the university-based communities across the country. And, you know, we like to say case study, copy and steal everything, found all the good ideas that were happening. And then where were the opportunities to do things differently? It took about a decade because he came back and said, this is, you know, the board said, yep, this is a great idea. Let's do this. But it's a state university, as we've mentioned. So there was some enabling legislation required to to have the opportunity for an outside entity to be built upon state land. And that took a minute to get through the legislature in New York. And what I love about this project, aside from the fact that it marries, you know, a great senior living community and a thriving college campus, is that it also has some components set forth through that enabling legislation that make it a little different than other UBRCs across the country. One is that they said up from the onset that they wanted at least 20% of the residences of this Life Plan Community that would be built to be earmarked or designated for what we call below market rate. Not affordable housing, but really made available for those older adults that have what I would call a mid-level income. It's less than 80% of the annual median income of those residents of Westchester County. One of my frustrations in working in senior living is that it is expensive. I think it's a great value, but it's not inexpensive. And it's, it's hard when you're sitting across the table from some, you know, older adults that have done everything right, worked hard, saved money, are interested in an opportunity, and you run the numbers and you figure out they just can't afford it. So it's wonderful to have a community that opens up a little bit like that.

Yeah, that's great because that is always the concern, is it affordable? So 20% of the units there are what we call below market rate.

So market rate, it's a far discounted rate from the standard.

Yeah, so I know the construction is still underway and you expect, you anticipate the opening to be a year from now, a little over. What, what do you think the first day would look like for the residents there? I mean, we know typical activities in senior living communities. But what would the first day look like?

Well, interestingly enough, as the pandemic has been transformative in many ways, right? We all feel that. And you're probably wondering why I'm talking about the pandemic and then the first day, which is about a year away when people move in. But one thing that it forced us to do was to become very comfortable in the digital space. The reason I bring that up is, We are now a little over 90% reserved. So we have a large number of— we call them charter members, but people that have placed reservations. And they're routinely gathering in Zoom calls and different chat groups. And now they're even in walking clubs and kind of even have self-divided by neighborhoods and are getting together. And now that things are loosening up a little in the New York area, going out to dinner. So what I think the first day will look like is a reunion. I think— like a wonderful opportunity for people who have been expecting and anticipating and enjoying coming to build community before the community's built to actually say we're home. And obviously we're pretty excited about that.

Yeah, I'm sure that's a great concept. The residents and charter members are already getting acquainted with one another and having some networking activities. That's great, that's great. So On the first day when people have moved in, then it's like a reunion, kind of seeing people in person and being there. So what kind of activities will be offered? Sure, education-wise and, you know, within the community itself?

Sure. So that's, that's, I think, really probably the largest component of when you're considering a university-based community, um, that is really the differentiator that sets you— sets the community Just the really almost endless opportunity to engage on the campus culturally, intellectually, academically, intergenerationally. I mean, there's just many, many great ways to interact currently, virtually. Those charter members are involved in book clubs and cinema clubs and mentoring programs that all take place via Zoom through Purchase College faculty. But, you know, maybe they're discussing a book or reviewing a film or, or even hearing concerts concerts. One thing that's great about Purchase College is it is not only a liberal arts school, but it's also a conservatory of dance, music, performing arts, and the fine arts. So, you know, a whole plethora of emerging artists that can't wait to have a built-in audience, exhibitions, performances, concerts, you know, you name it, there will be any day of the week, there will be opportunities for residents to engage. And that's not even talking about just the kind of informal, unstructured engagements of walking across campus and mentoring opportunities and things like that.

So, I'm curious to know more about the charter members. What kinds of people are interested in living on a college campus?

It's so funny. I love that question. I get that a lot when I tell people that I work with. First of all, they say, well, what does UBRC stand for? And then I say, well, that's a University-Based Retirement Community. And then they say, why? Who does that? I say, well, curiously enough, when you stop and think about it, the typical resident for a university-based community, and certainly Broadview has proven to be no different, are older adults that regardless of their diverse background, they come from a whole myriad of fields, they come from all over the country, they're all wide-ranging ages from 62 to 93, but they have a commonality in that they are learners. They have been people that have invested and engaged in learning, whether that's through hobbies or structured academics or medical professionals that want to lead continuing education programs. They're learners. They want to be engaged in continuing to keep their mind active and engaged. And sometimes that's through a hands-on sculpture class, and sometimes that's through the latest techniques in anesthesiology, and sometimes it's picking up a new sport. But they have this desire and commitment to lifelong learning. And I think that that is another reason why university-based communities are attractive to me, because I personally am in, I like to think that there's always something new to learn and open a door and find out what's in there. And from the perspective that these residents will be very, very diverse for sure, very diverse backgrounds. We already talked about lots of socioeconomic difference, but they come in knowing that there's a commonality among them. So it's not going to be strange to say— I mean, just today I sent out an email. There was a Latin jazz concert in honor of Cinco de Mayo, and it was, you know, we're starting to have some in-person things on campus that are open to the public. So even though we're not built, it's a college campus, and there was a whole group of them that I saw the emails flying around that they were meeting to go to this senior exhibition of Latin jazz students. So that's the kind of thing that I think really defines who the resident is at a university-based community.

Yeah, that's a great, that's a great description. So the desire to learn doesn't cut off at any specific age. That, I love that. I love that. Yeah. And I was thinking the cognitive stimulation enhancement, the continue learning and engaging and stretching our thinking process a little bit. That's so beneficial. For myself, I bought a set of electronic drums a year ago. I've never, never played it.

Exactly.

And I decided I wanted— because I love to watch good drummers. So these are electronic, and that means you can wear a headset and nobody can hear you. Oh, as opposed to acoustic drums where your neighbors might come knocking on your door and say, what's that racket? Aren't necessarily as excited about your new hobby, but that's right, not quite as excited. The spouse is very patient, but yeah, electronically, and it's great. I love it. But it's that, it's that notion of continuing to— you use the expression— open new doors and see what's on the other side of that door. Yeah, that's great. That's great.

You know, I'll just expand a little bit just to say too that the curious thing that happens at these campus environments though is that You know, I think that because the other question that you get is, well, who wants to move there? But then what students want to go to campus where a lot of older adults have just moved in? And I think it takes about one semester, has been my experience, for both constituencies to realize, wow, this is a great symbiotic relationship. This— the, the older adults that maybe think they have a thing or two to teach, and they certainly do, a wealth of lifetime experience to share. They also benefit from that brand new perspective of an entirely different generation that may be in a, in an auditing class taking the same topic and seeing it through wildly different lenses. And that dynamic and conversation is interesting to people that want to learn. That's one thing. But the second thing is students immediately, immediately are savvy and pick up that, wow, this is an entire group of professional capital. This is like a walking, living, breathing career development center that just got dropped into the center of campus. So whether it's medicine or music or social worker education, I can guarantee there's someone that is either still working and close to retirement or was wildly successful and recently retired, and boy, do they want to share that knowledge and even sometimes those connections. So after, you know, my career and working in university-based communities, I could go anecdote after anecdote about incredibly rewarding and fulfilling relationships between someone who's recently retired and someone who is emerging in the field and how they joined forces to magnify both of their success.

Yeah, really complementing each other. Yeah. Are there any signs yet that students are particularly selecting Purchase College for this reason, or is that too early?

I think it's probably too early. We get a lot of questions from students, for sure. But it won't take long. I mean, it won't take long.

Yeah, no, I agree. It's a great concept. And that mutual learning experience really makes a difference because it's one thing to be around people our own age, but to mix with another age group, either much older or much younger, then that just is— that's wildly optimistic. I mean, you can get all kinds of possibilities from that. Sure. So will the residents be taking classes with students or will they be segregated?

So, um, you know, the answer is probably yes to both. They'll certainly have the opportunity to, um, take classes on the campus through the auditing program, which exists, and they'll have, you know, of course, greater proximity because it's literally in their backyard, um, much like the students in their student housing. So I would imagine that that auditing program will just even continue to grow and ramp up. And then one of the other great things about— I mentioned earlier that Tom Schwartz, the previous president, had gone around the country, and one of the things that he astutely identified was that very often, I mean, I think almost always, the campuses and universities exist first, and then a retirement community is introduced. And for lack of a better term, they're often kind of shoehorned into the existing academic spaces. They're not usually, you know, you're just using the buildings that were already there, and that works great. Except that sometimes there are specific needs and specific desires from both the students and the residents that aren't well served by a traditional academic building that was designed strictly for undergraduate and graduate students. And so part of Broadview is to have this— I am just— this is what gets someone like me super excited— a really unique space called the Learning Commons, which will be a 10,000-square-foot space that is specifically from its very first brick designed for the intergenerational use of students and residents together for formal instruction and informal gathering. So things like exhibition space and pavilion space, but also a culinary arts center where you can grab a bite to eat but also take a cooking class and interact. Maybe a maker space where, you know, maybe some of those fine arts classes, but it's not necessarily as intense. We envision that the Learning Commons will be used for like 6-week classes instead of a full semester long. Sometimes folks, older adults, want to jump in and do a whole semester, but they may also want to throw some travel in there and visits with family and who knows what else. They're retired. So a 6-week time period seems to be very appealing to the, you know, older adults that we've surveyed, that that seems like a nice deep dive on a subject but isn't quite the commitment of an entire semester. So they will have opportunities to do things in the traditional classroom with the students, in the Learning Commons, in a kind of a more atypical, I would say, progressively thought of space that will be for both students and also for residents alone. So I really think they're going to have a bit of a buffet in terms of what they can choose from and how they will, how they will choose to interact.

Yeah. So this building, the Learning Commons, was designed and built specifically with these intergenerational process of mine. So yeah, wow, that's great. What about mentoring? You can imagine there's a lot of wisdom and just understanding of the world that older adults, seniors will possess, do possess. How is that going to be leveraged? Will you be able to— Yeah, for some mentoring programs.

So it's a great question. So that is actually just getting launched right now, even before we're officially open and Residents are living on campus. We're working through the Office of Career Development on Purchase campus, the existing Office of Career Development on Purchase College's campus, to find out how do we— we know that there's a group of older adults with lots of, I will call it, institutional wisdom from whatever their fields are because they've had literally an entire lifetime and professional career to share. And we have a whole group, cohorts of kids in a myriad of fields fields that would like to be able to marry those. And so we needed to, to refine the process on how do we, how do we match them in ways that are meaningful so they can both benefit. And it was identified through Purchase College that perhaps the, the Office of Career Development, they're already working with students who have identified the fields they want to pursue and they're looking to launch their careers. And then they can. So we're in the process right now of developing forms and the format by which that will— and they even have software that we will use to match students. And we just launched the first, what we're calling affinity group. And it's actually in healthcare. We have a number of physicians, nurses, people who have worked in healthcare. There are a number of students on Purchase College campus that would love to go to medical school and on to receive higher degrees in nursing and things like that. And so we're looking and beginning to match those right now. So hopefully a year from now, we'll start to have success stories.

Sure. Yeah, that's great. I can imagine there will be a lot of guest lectures too. I mean, certain classes, if you can invite one of the residents there with a history in science or art or healthcare, and they can come in and not just a one-on-one mentoring, but even just to present some of the real-world information to the class.

Oh, exactly. I mean, and this is, you know, I'm speaking specifically of Broadview, but this also branches out to other UBRCs I've worked in. It's not obviously a stretch. It's not surprising, I'm sure, to learn that many of our residents and charter members and depositors come from academia. I mean, that makes sense, right? If you've spent your life working in academics, then that makes perfect sense that you just want to keep on living there. You love that, that kind of campus dynamic. So we have several actually deans of graduate schools and medical schools that are coming to retire at Broadview. So you can imagine if you are an undergraduate and you're anxious to get into medical school, wow, how great is that to have right there in your back pocket someone that can say, well, let me tell you about medical school, and this is what makes your application a strong application, and, you know, all the kinds of tips and tricks. And that could be said not just in medical school, but across the whole, you know, a large landscape of fields.

Yeah, I know it's a great model. It's a great model where you can get all that experience and share with the students and students don't always have clear ideas about where they're headed, right? I mean, they open to all kinds of possibilities, and, you know, whatever kind of information and counsel or, you know, recommendations or just the answers can make a big difference in their, their academic life.

Yeah, and I will tell you, Joe, that I think another thing that is so— that's just been my experience in witnessing— but another thing that's so valuable for students to hear is that it's almost never a straight path. And, you know, I think often, and I have a bias here because I have a recent college graduate and a college freshman of my own right now, and I think they have this incredible pressure that they feel to have it all figured out and they know exactly the trajectory they're going to take. And in fact, they meet with these incredibly warm and gracious and generous, you know, folks that will want to share their experience. And they realize that it actually was a very circuitous meandering path because that's what it's like like for most of us, right? We didn't say when we were 16, well, this is what I'm going to go study in college, and at 96 say, my gosh, that's exactly what I did and never took my eye off the ball. No, in fact, it's winding and curvy.

And that's such a good— that's such a good point because I talk about the post-retirement years as not being a straight trajectory either, because we are now looking at a lot of new cycles and a lot of new doors being open and new chapters. So for the student and for the post-retiree, I think there's just all kinds of doors to open.

And yeah, I totally agree.

Yeah, that's great. How about scholarships? And is there any kind of program for residents to contribute to scholarships?

So this is the other thing, and I think I even got my own self off track when I was talking about the below market rate. But the other thing that the state legislature said way back when, when we were talking about how this community got started, and this is just a beautiful part of this particular university-based community, is they really wanted the two entities, the retirement community and the university, from a financial perspective to be completely siloed. The funds are not commingled. The university is not paying to develop the community, and the community is not in any way, you know, their funds and finances are not commingled with the university. But what they did say, how the relationship— because if we remember way back when, I said what, what the president, the then president said was, what resource do we have? We have this great 500 acres of land. What's our mission? How do we reach more people? And how does that somehow financially support the university? The state legislature said, well, if you bring this not-for-profit community to your campus, It will be on state land. And so we think it's appropriate that they enter into a lease, and in this case it happens to be 75 years long. And as part of the retirement community's operational, you know, budget, they would make an annual lease payment to the college. They would pay a lease to reside on the 40 acres that they're being built upon. And that money that is paid to the college in the form of a lease is earmarked. 75% of it goes to student scholarship and 25% of it goes to faculty support and recruitment. So it adds an influx of cash into the university and it allows the community to exist in this, you know, I will say almost idyllic location. And in that respect, it allows the, uh, the college to offer more and greater scholarship to more deserving students. So it— Tom Schwartz was a fan of saying it's a win-win all around. And I think in this particular instance, it surely is.

It's sure— is the other 25% going to just the university for operations support?

Faculty? It's going to faculty recruitment and retention and being able to offer, you know, things like of continuing education to faculty, and, um, and of course that makes the faculty happy. Sure.

Yeah, that's in lieu of purchasing the land outright. If you were in an area that was not university-based, you'd be paying for purchase of that land to manage it.

Exactly.

Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, win-win. I can see that. Yeah. So I'm curious, what would you hope our listeners take away from this? I mean, We have listeners from around the US and, you know, many of them would be very interested in Broadview, but not everyone, of course. So what would you hope our audience takes away from this conversation?

So, you know, I hope more than anything else, and overarching is that, and, you know, I don't have to— you, you know this and you get this, is that my experience in working with older adults has has really just cemented in my mind that this, like all chapters of your life, is a new opportunity. And if you will, almost a new adventure, free of many of the, you know, kind of restrictions that you have during the— you're working— the working period of your life. And that if you allow yourself to be open to opportunities that might seem outside the box, moving back to college, you can in fact open doors that will change the experience, transform the experience into something that is more worthwhile than you probably could imagine. The opportunities to give to students of your, of your wisdom and your insights, the opportunity to give to yourself, the opportunity to grow and learn, and the opportunity to surround yourself with like-minded and very opposing-minded individuals, but that have a commonality that they are open. And for me, that's a really exciting thing.

That's an important message, isn't it? That's really an important message. How many UBRCs are there around the US?

Um, so I will tell you that I used to keep very close tabs on that. Um, I, I believe it's about, uh, probably around 3 dozen. But like everything else in life, university-based communities are— there's all kinds of gradations, right? There's all kinds of— there are Universities like Broadview that are literally in the heart of a campus. The, the apartments of Broadview will be as close to the academic center as are the residence halls for students. So when I say it's on campus, I mean it is on campus and, and fully integrated in many, many structural ways. You could go clear to the other end of the spectrum of retirement communities that may be are nowhere near— well, or, you know, I shouldn't say nowhere near, but not on a college campus, but they have visiting professors that come to their community and give lectures and talks, or they have a shuttle bus that maybe drives 2 times a week to a college campus maybe 30 or 40 minutes away, and they have a level of engagement. So that number varies widely in terms of how many UBRCs are there. Depending on how wide or narrow you make the parameters of definition.

Yeah, yeah. So there are many variations on this theme, and sure, some that are just like Broadview, probably in the dozens, 2 to 3 dozen.

Yeah, if maybe not even.

Not even. Okay. All right. Yeah, great information. Well, it looks like we're out of time for today. Actually, before we wrap up, I just want to remind our listeners about a co-sponsor for our program, A Mighty Good Time. Are you looking for ways to engage and stay active? Check out amightygoodtime.com. It's a one-stop shop for events and activities for those 50 and over. It's free to search and it's free to post. amightygoodtime.com. And be sure to visit the Living to 100 Club website to sign up for our weekly podcast announcements and our monthly newsletters. And while you're there, be sure to download a free copy of my 9 Tips for Living Longer. Lastly, pick up a copy of my book, Living Longer Is the New Normal. It's all about maintaining a positive mindset in all we do. It's on Amazon as an ebook or as a hard copy. We've been talking today with Ashley Wade. Ashley, for those who might want to contact you, what's the best way to do that?

So probably hop to our website, which is very easy. It's broadviewseniorliving.org. And, um, you, uh, for in there, there's all kinds of information about how to get in contact. Broadview Senior Living living.org.

Okay, great. Thanks very much for this conversation. It was great. I, I love learning about this, and I might want to put my name on your list there. As a former New Yorker, I could reconnect with that very easily.

We would love that. Thank you so much.

Yeah, you're sure welcome. And thanks to all of our listeners today for tuning in. I hope to see you next time.

Hi everyone, this is Meredith from the Senior Fitness with Meredith podcast where I discuss all things for seniors, from fitness, your health and wellness journeys, how to be all over strong and beyond. I also have my mini podcast called Motivation with Meredith. It's a great quick motivational pick-me-up for your days. Join me, listen now, search for Senior Fitness with Meredith on your favorite podcast platform.