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Senior dwelling and college pairings are nothing new, however in 2025, the mannequin is evolving and accelerating into its subsequent kind.
This week, Varcity – an organization that builds residential retirement villages on the campuses of U.S. faculties – introduced its latest mission, a group undertaken in partnership with Texas A&M College. The group, deliberate for the college’s campus in Faculty Station, Texas, is slated to incorporate villas, townhomes and concierge residences, with facilities reminiscent of a meals truck, areas for co-working and a 3D printing house with a tech assist desk.
Varcity’s technique is to develop intergenerational communities on or very close to the campuses of well-known universities. The corporate is exclusive in that it’s searching for to safe college brand and naming rights, not only a plot of unused land on or adjoining to campus.
Senior Housing Information has spilled loads of digital ink through the years writing in regards to the development of senior dwelling operators partnering with universities and opening communities on campus. The timelines for senior dwelling growth tasks are already longer now than they had been prior to now, and that’s very true for college tasks, that are normally topic to prolonged evaluations and approval processes.
However for so long as these tasks take, I’ve seen them slowly evolve over the past eight years. The place it was extra frequent to see these tasks on the campuses of smaller or liberal arts faculties, the mannequin is beginning to be embraced by the likes of Texas A&M and Purdue.
Varcity, as a part of this development, is providing a brand new spin on the mannequin that might higher attraction to older adults – and much more crucially, to universities themselves. Greater than that, universities now see older adults not simply as alumni however as “new clients.”
On this members-only SHN+ replace, I analyze this and different tasks together with latest reporting and supply the next takeaways:
- How Varcity’s mannequin represents a brand new type of university-based senior dwelling
- The rising variety of university-based retirement communities
- Different new tasks that point out how universities and senior dwelling suppliers are collaborating in 2025
Catering to residents and universities alike
College-senior dwelling fashions have lengthy appealed to a sure kind of resident. However these tasks haven’t at all times appealed to universities themselves.
Some university-senior dwelling tasks got here to a halt through the early days of Covid, whereas others by no means obtained off the bottom to start with. I recall a dialog I had just a few years in the past with Ryan Haller, who was one of many authentic founders of the Varcity model (he has since stepped away from the group).
In 2022, Haller stated that some universities simply didn’t need to cater to older adults on campus and as a substitute had been specializing in rising the everyday faculty pupil demographic of individuals between the ages of 18 and 22.
In 2025, that sentiment is altering. A latest Market article chronicled a pilot mission at Goucher Faculty close to Baltimore to mix college life and senior dwelling from operator Edenwald – and in response to residents and the college alike, it’s bearing fruit.
However it wasn’t the mission that essentially caught my consideration. What caught my eye was as a substitute a quote from Goucher Faculty President Kent Devereaux, who referred to as older adults “our new clients.”
“By 2034, there’s going to be extra Individuals over 65 than there are below 20. That is the expansion marketplace for increased training sooner or later,” Devereaux advised Market.
Senior dwelling operators have lengthy seen the potential for college and senior dwelling partnerships. However I feel it’s notable that Devereaux and Goucher see older adults as a brand new group to focus on as they face a “demographic cliff” forward within the type of fewer youthful college students.
I imagine that shifting sentiment is mirrored within the rising variety of university-based retirement communities. Andrew Carle, an adjunct college member at Georgetown College who has held a wide range of senior dwelling management positions through the years, has lengthy seen the potential for senior dwelling and college tasks.
Carle is behind UniversityRetirementCommunities.com, a web site that tracks and certifies retirement communities related to a college or faculty. In April, he advised me that educational establishments are “seeing a strategic alternative” in senior living-university partnerships, and he has tracked near 90 such tasks within the U.S. as of this month.
“[University retirement communities] proceed to current a big strategic alternative, exceeding trade benchmarks for each pre-opening lease up and post-opening occupancy,” Carle advised me. “I’m presently in communication or working immediately with greater than 10 universities and faculties starting from preliminary evaluation to formal RFPs.”
Within the Market article, Carle warned that not each college is well-suited for senior dwelling, particularly people who lack large sports activities amenities or curb attraction. And I feel that’s partially why there have solely been dozens of those tasks through the years, regardless of the clear alternatives.
Varcity, then again, is concentrating on greater fish within the type of massive universities like Purdue and Texas A&M. Up to now, I’ve heard that these sorts of faculties have been hesitant to convey senior dwelling on campus and have most well-liked to develop unused land for different functions.
As a substitute of merely asking for house on which to construct a senior dwelling group, Varcity is enterprise these tasks in tandem with the colleges themselves, with title and brand rights and a slate of programming and perks integrating residents into faculty life. Varcity CEO Les Strech sees that as a key issue for the model differentiating it from extra conventional senior housing on campus.
“Varcity builds intergenerational communities older adults need to transfer to. They’re lifelong studying campuses built-in into the college ecosystem in a public-private partnership alongside the college,” Strech advised SHN earlier this week. “This line of pondering has led to a few massive universities within the final six months reaching out.”
As Varcity’s tasks come on-line, I feel they’ll function a mannequin for related tasks at different universities. I share Strech’s perception that these fashions may serve the boomer technology effectively, however provided that they really stroll the stroll and actually combine into the material of college dwelling.
To that finish, such tasks may develop into more and more profitable as child boomers after which Gen X develop into senior dwelling residents. Up to now, senior dwelling affiliations with universities have hit problems due to contrasting life-style preferences of youthful college students and older adults. A authorized battle between Mirabella at ASU, a senior dwelling group close to Arizona State College, and a neighboring music venue grabbed headlines just some years in the past, and even led to a protest outdoors the senior dwelling group.
That’s not to say that incoming senior dwelling residents shall be wanting to reside subsequent to a loud digital dance music hotspot, however a technology that’s flocking to Latitude Margaritaville communities has expectations that may align extra naturally with campus life.
College-based senior dwelling nonetheless evolving
In 2022, Senior Housing Information wrote that university-based senior dwelling tasks had been on the cusp of a brand new chapter. Three years later, I nonetheless imagine that’s true, even when progress is gradual. Already, I see some new tasks that point out the place the development is headed subsequent.
One such mission is an enlargement underway at Lasell Village, a group that shares a campus with its namesake, Lasell College. The group is increasing with 42 new impartial dwelling models and boomer-centric facilities reminiscent of a restaurant with avenue entry, health heart, efficiency house, library, clubhouse and a wellness heart.
The mission additionally features a second-floor pedestrian bridge to attach the group to an current city corridor house.
Earlier this yr, Southern Oregon College started exploring senior dwelling on the positioning of a defunct dormitory, with SOU President Rick Bailey noting the mission is supposed to assist “reimagine the fiscal mannequin of the establishment” to “assist us transition from being solely depending on state {dollars} and tuition for our income sources.”
The group is geared towards “a rising contingent of beforehand underserved nontraditional college students: Retirees,” in response to its January request for proposals on the web site.
On the finish of the day, I feel this development will proceed to slowly develop and evolve. Whereas these tasks symbolize distinctive challenges, additionally they comprise distinctive alternatives for people who undertake them. And I might not be shocked if Varcity and different firms considerably upsized the variety of such tasks within the years to come back given the brand new alignment of targets between universities and senior dwelling.
That stated, universities and senior dwelling additionally share a standard problem: Ballooning prices for shoppers. As increased training and senior dwelling more and more discover methods of partnering, I hope that additionally they hit on artistic options for making senior dwelling financially attainable for a wider swath of individuals. I’m envisioning work-study jobs that assist employees a group at an inexpensive wage price, or efficiencies of scale in eating or environmental upkeep. Regardless of the method, such innovation may very well be key to not solely interesting to the “new clients” however truly delivering a product that they will purchase.
