Theme park developer creating retirement villages

Theme park developer takes on new challenge: creating luxury retirement villages

The St. Elizabeth village at Hamilton Mountain in Ontario, Canada, is undergoing a re-development by Forrec, the company that famously built Legoland Deutschland, Universal Studios Florida and Canada’s Wonderland among other project.

The bill for the development? A massive $800 million.

The 114-acre site is set to be turned into a pastoral mill town, including a spinning water wheel and old-time windmill. The population, currently around 900 residents will jump to 3,000.

The idea for the renovation came from president Tony DiFruscio after his company took over the village in 2014. After talking to residents about how they could revamp the 30 plus-year-old village while still maintaining its historic “feel”, he thought of Disney’s Boardwalk, a shopping, dining and nightlife precinct based in the US’s Florida.

Creating a narrative through design

That led him to the theme park developer, which uses a team of designers and creatives who design each of their developments around a central story or ‘theme’.

For St. Elizabeth, the Toronto-based company was inspired by the history of the local area and the fact the area had previously had a number of mills. They created a story about a mill owner settling the land, marrying a local woman and together turning the mill into a success. The mill owner then grants parcels of land to his workers, which in turn, become the thriving town.

The designs for the redeveloped village show new buildings and renovated townhouses sitting around a central town square with restaurants and shops that will be open to both the public as well as residents. Some part of the community, such as an indoor pool and housing, will remain strictly private.

“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.”

Luxury-style living

Instead, the development is named as a ‘resort’ on their site, where it sits along five-star resorts in Mexico, Singapore and Thailand and their one other village project which was built in Florida.

First established in 1995, ‘The Villages’ has since expanded  into three themed communities that covers over 82,000 square kilometres and has over 55,000 homes and more than 120,000 residents.

The community is so large residents usually use golf carts to transport themselves around the village.

Though the St. Elizabeth village expansion is expected to take about ten years to complete, work has already begun on some of its 558 existing townhouses with plans to open the entertainment precinct by the end of 2017.

With the number of retirees on the rise in Canada and the expectation they will be responsible for 80 per cent of new housing by 2030, Forrec’s executive vice-president Steve Rhys says they hope to set the model for other future retirement developments both in Canada and worldwide.

“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.”