Go west, not-so-young man
Florida is no longer the preferred choice as a retirement haven
Don and Maggie Denton always figured they'd retire in Florida. For 15 years the two business and estate analysts had bounced between offices near Orlando and in Columbus, Ohio. So when Don, at age 62, and Maggie, 59, decided to simplify their lives prior to retiring, they sold their Ohio home and 8,000-square-foot Florida house and downsized to a home less than half the size in Disney's new town of Celebration. That, they thought, would be their last move.
Don laughs--now. "We quickly realized there was no way we were going to stay in Florida," he says. The Dentons found the heat and humidity oppressive from May to September. Most of their neighbors were still raising kids, not flashing photos of grandkids. And bingo at the local senior center wasn't their idea of staying active. As retirement inched closer, Celebration's picket fences began to lose their charm. "Suddenly the question was: 'Now that we're going to retire, what are we going to do?' " says Maggie.
Zeroing in. And so, after a few years of alligator-watching from the front porch, the couple found themselves Googling for a new place to live. They zeroed in on Sun City Anthem, an age-restricted community in Henderson, a Las Vegas suburb 15 minutes from the Strip. Their new view, from their back patio, overlooks the fairways of the community's golf course and the glittering lights of Sin City in the valley below. "This is like Disney World and Universal for adults," says Don. "Not only do you have great hospitals, great universities, and great neighborhoods, but you have shows and restaurants."
Retirees still flock to Florida, of course, but their net has widened. "The gap between Florida and everyplace else has narrowed," says William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution and the University of Michigan. Today's retirement magnets are university towns, resort destinations, and suburban oases of major cities. They are small cities like Oxford, Miss.; Madison, Wis.; and Medford, Ore. They are regions like the Pacific Northwest, the Texas Hill Country, and the Ozarks.
Retirees are flooding into new developments in America's desert Southwest and the Rockies. Between 1990 and 2000, according to census data, Nevada showed the greatest percentage increase among all states in people 65 and older (72 percent), followed by Alaska (60 percent), Arizona (39 percent), and New Mexico (30 percent). The over-65 populations in Phoenix, San Antonio, Denver, and Las Cruces, N.M., all showed double-digit growth rates during the '90s.
No metropolitan region saw bigger gains than Nevada's Las Vegas Valley. Between 1990 and 2000, the over-65 population in the Las Vegas metro area grew 86 percent--from about 99,000 to more than 184,000. Most of these new recruits are buying into fast-growing suburbs like Henderson, which until recently was an industrial outpost. Today, it is the second-largest city in Nevada, boasting four retirement communities, a senior center, and eight golf courses.
To residents, the city's single greatest attraction isn't the Strip but the surrounding desert hill country. Valley of Fire State Park, Death Valley, and other state and national re-creation areas all are within a day's drive. "Every hole is a scenic wonder," says retired ad executive Mike Tobey, 64, of the view of the Red Rock Mountains from the Falls golf course in Lake Las Vegas, a planned development patterned on an Italian seaside retreat, east of Henderson. "Sometimes we come down the fairway, and we see bighorn mountain sheep grazing. You would think that you were in Montana, not Las Vegas."
Nestled in the foothills of the northern Colorado Rockies, Fort Collins is another new retirement haven. This erstwhile frontier outpost is home to Colorado State University and more than 7,500 acres of untouched nature. Because of its small-town feel and rich culture, the city consistently makes top 10 lists of places to retire. Which may explain why its over-65 population grew by 35 percent and its near-retiree population more than doubled during the '90s.
Activities galore. Peggy McGough, 67, moved there with her husband, Byron, 71, from Bisbee, Ariz., nearly five years ago. "Bisbee was two hours to the airport, two hours to the theater, and 45 minutes to shopping," she says. Fort Collins offered big sky, open spaces, a movie theater, and its own opera company. When the McGoughs aren't attending monthly history lectures or tapping their feet to Dixieland jazz at one of the town's nightspots, they spend their time touring the West with retirees from a Model T club.
Apart from scenery, golf courses, and plenty of sun (Yuma, Ariz., gets more than 4,000 hours of sunlight a year, making it America's sunniest spot), an abundance of things to do marks the new retirement magnets. Besides world-class skiing, Park City, Utah, offers photography and landscaping classes. The wineries in the Hill Country near San Marcos, Texas, host tasting tours ("Wine Trails"), and Santa Fe, N.M., offers a menu ranging from ironwork and calligraphy classes to horseback riding and performances of Verdi.
In part, the demographic shift to small and midsize cities with rich cultural and recreational opportunities reflects wealth and education, says Warren Bland, a California State University geography professor and author of Retire in Style: 50 Affordable Places Across America. Unlike their predecessors, he says, many of today's retirees are coming from large urban areas; are college educated, wired, and worldly; and have lived healthier lives--meaning they can expect to live longer--than their predecessors did. "People are looking for a lively and entertaining experience in retirement," says Bland. "They're not just going to lie around for their last 10 years."
Obviously, money counts. Some of the fastest-growing senior magnets are in states with no personal income tax, such as Alaska, Nevada, and Texas. The Lone Star State also freezes school-district property taxes for homeowners at age 65. Other states that don't levy personal income tax are Florida, South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming. (Tennessee and New Hampshire don't either, but they do tax investment income.) Social Security benefits aren't taxed by 26 states, and many states offer full or partial exemptions on pension income.
Family ties or the lack of them are also a factor, and not just for retirees. The same cities that have posted net gains among empty nesters and retirement-age people are at the top of the list as draws for all age groups. So retirees who decide to move in order to be closer to family members often find themselves in rapidly expanding cities in the Southwest and the Rockies.
That's what happened to 79-year-old veteran Murray Cohen. In a wheelchair since a World War II combat injury, he was living in New York with his oldest daughter when she died unexpectedly at age 44. He moved from New York to Austin three years ago at the behest of his younger daughter. "It was a difficult move. I had many friends in New York, and two sisters and a brother. But my daughter wanted me here with her," says Cohen, who lives in an apartment on his own and uses a city-run shuttle service to get around. He starts his week with a Monday morning "News and Schmooze" program at a nearby Jewish community center. Then there's physical therapy, bridge in the afternoon, and various trips run by the center's "Roads Scholars" to movies and other goings-on.
No baggage. After separating from his wife of 43 years, 70-year-old Roger Kunz suddenly found himself footloose and faced with starting over. He decided, quite literally, to take wing. Kunz sold his worldly possessions and moved to Winfield Airpark in Altus, Ark., a "fly-in" community where plane-owning residents can taxi right to their front doors. A flyboy since his youth, Kunz picked up a Rans S-14 ultralight experimental aircraft on eBay and now spends his time soaring over the Arkansas River Valley. "I left all my baggage and my wife in California, and I am following my dreams," he says with unabashed enthusiasm.
Some retirees are returning to the places of their youth. "Typically these are college towns, locations of military bases, or second-tier cities where housing is still affordable," says Lori McMillan Bitter, partner with the Mature Market Group of the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson Worldwide. Of the 50 to 60 regulars in the Men's Breakfast Club at the Lakeway Activities Center west of Austin, 15 to 20 are retired military personnel. Many first encountered the city when they were assigned to a military base. Gary Stuart originally fell in love with the Santa Fe area in 1960, when he was in the Army and was stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, for a year and a half. "The motel where I once stayed when I was on a three-day pass was still here 40 years later," he says.
But many cities have become retirement magnets simply because their populations have aged. The retirement-age population in Anchorage grew by 72 percent, from 8,258 to 14,242, from 1990 to 2000. "The growth that we're seeing is from people who lived and worked here and are opting to stay," says Ann Secrest, a spokesperson for AARP Alaska.
To retired teacher Peg Stout, 75, living in Anchorage is like "living in a box of Christmas cards." She and her husband, a retired Army colonel, first came to Anchorage in 1971, when he was transferred to nearby Fort Richardson. They've been here ever since. To them, Alaska's mountain vistas, uncrowded streets, and spectacular northern lights more than make up for the long winters. "Ours is a drier cold. We can dress against it, and so the cold up here just doesn't go through you like that wet East Coast cold," says Stout, who even helps her daughter, a champion dog musher, prepare for the Iditarod.
As the first baby boomers turn 65 in 2011, some of these demographic trends will accelerate. By 2030, the number of seniors is expected to swell to 79 million. Where will they live? Will they move, as many of their parents did, or stay put? Because of higher incomes, researchers say, more boomers will have the wherewithal to move than prior generations did; yet studies also show they are just as likely to stay put because of family ties, preferring frequent travel over relocating.
Staying put. "The World War II generation was the flight-to-Florida, flight-to-Arizona market. We don't think the boomers are going to migrate the way that their parents did," says McMillan Bitter. "I think that they are going to have to work longer, which means that they are going to have to stay close to where there are jobs."
Del Webb, the company that built the Sun City communities scattered throughout the Sun Belt, is betting that boomers will stay put. In a 1999 survey, the company found that of every 10 boomers, 3 plan a long-distance move when they retire, 3 plan to move less than three hours away, and 4 don't plan to move at all. The company's response: smaller retirement communities with many of the activities and amenities of its Sun City developments but in places where boomers already live--like Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis, and New Jersey's suburbs.
Wherever they settle, the boomers will set off building booms, stimulate local economies, buoy volunteer workforces, and form powerful political constituencies. And they will create jobs for working-age folks, leading to an influx of younger people, in turn stimulating development and growth--not to mention soaring real-estate prices. New Jersey-based demographer and economist Richard Hokenson predicts that baby boomers, who have had to compete with one another at every stage of their lives, will also find themselves competing for choice retirement spots. Avoid the rush, he advises. "The longer you wait," he says, "the more expensive it will get."
Let's head for...Anchorage?
Retirees are thinking beyond traditional destinations like the heavily populated east and west coasts of Florida. Metro areas in Colorado, New Mexico, North and South Carolina, and even Alaska have become senior magnets, as shown by the rapid rate of growth from 1990 to 2000 in the 65-plus population of these retirement hot spots.
Major Metropolitan Areas
(1 million and over)
65-plus
Rank growth
1 Las Vegas 86.2 pct.
2 Phoenix-Mesa 38.0 pct.
3 Austin-San Marcos 37.3 pct.
4 Houston-Galveston-Brazoria 31.8 pct.
5 Atlanta 30.8 pct.
6 Orlando 28.8 pct.
7 Sacramento-Yolo, Calif. 27.8 pct.
8 Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C. 25.8 pct.
9 Denver-Boulder-Greeley 25.8 pct.
10 Dallas-Fort Worth 25.1 pct.
Small Metropolitan Areas
(under 1 million)
65-plus
Rank growth
1 Yuma, Ariz. 78.2 pct.
2 Naples, Fla. 77.9 pct.
3 Anchorage 72.5 pct.
4 Myrtle Beach, S.C. 61.7 pct.
5 Las Cruces, N.M. 55.7 pct.
6 Fort Walton Beach, Fla. 55.1 pct.
7 Ocala, Fla. 47.0 pct.
8 Flagstaff, Ariz. 46.3 pct.
9 Wilmington, N.C. 45.7 pct.
10 McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Tex. 43.8 pct.
Source: William H. Frey, analysis of census data
With Paul Berger, Carol Flake Chapman, Michelle Dally and Jeff Truesdell
This story appears in the June 14, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.