Reaching out to retirees.

INTEREST IN CREATING ON- OR NEAR-CAMPUS retirement communities continues to grow. Recent research explores the perspectives of potential residents and IHEs pursuing these projects.

Moody's Investors Service reports that about 50 university-linked retirement communities likely exist already; many others are in development. The paper, "Retirement Communities Present Opportunities and Risks for Universities," concludes that IHEs must "take a deliberate and strategic approach" to help ensure the success of these facilities. (A copy can be found online at www.universitybusiness.com/webexclusives).

Potential opportunities include revenue sources such as selling land to a developer and collecting tuition from residents who take courses. A careful approach to these projects would help avoid wasted money and a tarnished institutional reputation, should the project fail.

This "distraction" risk, as Moody's calls it, is one reason schools often hesitate on these developments, notes Gerard Badler, managing director of Campus Continuum, which is creating a network of campus-based communities. "Not many retirement communities have been organized with a high level of school input," he says. Critical steps such as conducting market and internal constituency assessments and developing financing projections could wind up being skipped or mismanaged.

A Campus Continuum survey of 233 baby boomers who like the idea of retiring to a college campus helps confirm that a market exists. Living in a small college town is preferred and more than one-third expressed interest in retiring to an IHE with which they had no prior affiliation.