University Towns Gaining Popularity As Retirement Sites

Eight out of 10 people retire in the communities they have come to call home.

Emotional attachments, economics and inertia all play a part in the decision to stay put. For these retirees, life goes on pretty much as usual.

“Like boats to a mooring,” observes Charles F. Longino Jr., a national authority on what make retirees tick, “people are tied to their environments by investments in their property. By the many community contexts in which they find meaning. By friends and family whose proximity they value. By the experiences of the past and by lifestyles that weave these strands together into satisfying activity.”

But others can’t wait to get away from it all. They go to great lengths planning and preparing for a change of scene and lifestyle.

For some, the end of the rainbow may be a bucolic college setting with its intellectually stimulating cultural milieu.

For others, the big attraction is a rustic haven by a remote lake in North Idaho, or a jewel of a golf-course community tucked away in the timbered hills of northeast Washington.

Increasingly in recent years, reports Longino, widely recognized as the foremost U.S. authority on retirement migration patterns, the sun havens of Florida and California have been losing retirement market share, while North Carolina’s rise has been meteoric.

A recent USA Today cover story by reporter Andrea Stone focused on college town retirees. There are three groups - former faculty, parents of present staff, and the intellectually curious.

Stone says typical college-town retirees are more affluent than most. They shun traditional retirement Meccas, she reports, as being “too hot, too crowded, too boring, or too full of old people.”

College-community retirees want to stay in the mainstream, and stay involved with simulating environments, she says.

Especially in the East, dozens of large-scale housing developments have opened and are being built in college towns that actively court seniors. They offer such perks as reduced course fees, library passes, free Internet connections, and discounts to concerts, plays and sporting events.

“Local governments view seniors as a good investment,” wrote Stone.

Tom Otwell, American Association of Retired Persons national spokesman, told me that foreward-looking business leaders in university communities “recognize the economic rewards of keeping alumni close. They expend considerable effort developing services and promoting programs attractive to this type of retiree.

“I frankly think a university environment is a dandy place to retire and take advantage of the culture, the educational offerings, the contact with young people, the diversity,” said the AARP executive.

Retirement relocation specialist Bob Tillman touts 20 college communities in a new video called “America’s Best Retirement Towns.” In this region, Tillman likes Corvallis, home of Oregon State University.

His list includes others like State College, Pa. (Penn State University); Ft. Collins, Colo. (Colorado State University); Burlington. Vt. (University of Vermont), and Oxford, Miss. (University of Mississippi.) Tillman says these are “quintessential retirement destinations” for people who don’t want to “get stale.”

As it happens, Winston-Salem, where Longino is professor of social gerontology at Wake Forest University, is particularly popular.

He agrees that culture, the joy of learning, and recreational amenities are strong magnets to retirees from an academic background.

Likewise, says Longino, other communities rub off on those who come to town during their work lives, stay for a time, and move on, but return to retire.

Spokane, for example, is an Air Force town, and Fairchild Air Force Base is the source of many of the Inland Northwest’s retirees. Military personnel assigned to the air base become attached to the area and come back upon upon separation from the service.

Next in this series: The best places to retire in the Untied States.

, DataTimes MEMO: Associate Editor Frank Bartel writes on retirement issues each Sunday. He can be reached with ideas for future columns at 459-5467 or fax 459-5482.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Frank Bartel The Spokesman-Review