Aging boomers test community planners

Atlanta is a magnet for the young and upwardly mobile, but it’s also graying like never before.

The 55 and older population is increasing at a faster clip than the population at large. In Gwinnett and Cherokee counties, for example, the senior population growth rate topped 72 percent between 2000 and 2007, the Atlanta Regional Commission says.

KEVIN DUFFY/kduffy@ajc.com

Stone Mountain Park’s vice president of sales and marketing, Sonny Horton, 57, has no plans to leave the Atlanta area – his children live here and his wife has embarked on a new career.

PUBLIC EVENTS
All at the Loudermilk Center for the Regional Community, 40 Courtland St., downtown Atlanta.
• 4-6 p.m.Wednesday: Architect Andres Duany will discuss community design.
• 10 a.m.-noon Saturday: Preliminary designs will be presented.
• 4-6 p.m. Feb. 17: Final plans will be presented.

“The number of older adults is going to skyrocket over the next 20 years,” ARC Director Charles “Chick” Krautler said.

A report by the ARC and the University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government says “this tremendous shift will transform the region and challenge every aspect of community life. It will force local leaders to question the way billions of dollars are spent. It will affect the way public and private services are delivered, homes are built, even the way streets are crossed.”

With that in mind, the ARC and a noted design firm — Miami-based Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. — will embark Monday on an intense nine-day workshop to plan five communities geared toward meeting the needs of older metro residents.

But these urban and suburban sites won’t be age-restricted communities.

Instead, they will be “lifelong communities” containing housing types and amenities for all age groups, because those are the surroundings many baby boomers prefer.

“I want to be in the center of a thriving neighborhood where we’ve got old people and young people,” said Demi Doyle, 60, who is planning to move from Marietta to intown Atlanta.

Doyle and her husband, Kevin, 55, are seeking a lifestyle change now that their daughter is grown. They want to be able to walk out their door to MARTA, shops and cultural attractions — “to do all the things I’ve wanted to do,” she said.

An estimated 78.2 million Americans — or 25 percent of the total population — are boomers born from 1946 to 1964.

They’re in transition, trading parenting and work for leisure or second careers.

A common thread is “they want to stay close to family,” said Marilynn Mobley, a 51-year-old senior vice president at the Atlanta office of Edelman, the public relations firm, who writes a blog for boomers.

“We’re actually starting to see a migration of seniors who went to Florida and are coming back,” she said.

Sonny Horton, the 57-year-old vice president of sales and marketing at Stone Mountain Park, said with two children in the Atlanta area and his wife, Sharon, engrossed in a new career as a family counselor, he has no intention of heading elsewhere.

“We’ve got a nice community of friends and church family here,” Horton said.

At the design workshops, planners and local stakeholders are hoping the flurry of activity will produce a raft of new ideas.

“The week we’ll be here will be that creative burst,” said Tom Low, director of the Charlotte office of Duany Plater-Zyberk. DPZ designed two of America’s better known planned communities — Seaside in Florida and Kentlands in Maryland.

The ARC says the workshops are “designed to challenge conventional thinking and inspire local officials, planners, developers and residents to find new ways of organizing neighborhoods, retail services, recreation, parks and transportation infrastructure.”

Krautler said, “Developers and architects and designers haven’t really figured out this change in demographics … how we’re going to incorporate this very large influx of older Americans.”

Five sites were chosen from among 25 applicants for the planning effort: 140 acres south of Grant Park in Atlanta; 70 acres in the Toco Hills neighborhood of DeKalb County; 21.3 acres in the Mableton area of Cobb County; 38 acres in downtown Fayetteville; and more than 100 acres near downtown Conyers.

They’re all adjacent to where people already live. The plans that come out of the workshops could steer future development.

“The more I learn about this the more intrigued I am,” said former Gov. Roy Barnes, who owns the Mableton site, a family homestead near the Mable House Barnes Amphitheatre.

Boomers, Barnes said, “don’t want to be segregated off into some place that is quote unquote ‘an old folks place.’ They want an integrated community. There’s no question there’s a great need for this.”

Conyers, 26 miles east of Atlanta, is eager to see the fruits of the design effort. It wants guidance on developing a big swath of land between Olde Town and I-20.

“What we’re going to get is a formidable plan,” City Manager Tony Lucas predicted, “to attract development.”

Krautler said he hopes the ARC will be able to share its results around the country.

“We don’t know of anyone else in the country doing anything like this,” he said.