Age in place: alive and well in Fairbanks: designing retirement communities.

• Author: Slaten, Russ
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Architects & Engineers

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Aging in place is the idea of living in a place that allows retirement age adults to continue living a full life beyond retirement years. It focuses on living in a desired residence that isn't about growing old, but about independence and building a community. Seniors are prepared for changes in their lives, including their health, family, and environment, as they grow older.

"If you settle down in your seventies to a home at Raven Landing, it really becomes home," says Susan Motter, general manager of Raven Landing Senior Community. "If you become disabled you will not have to move away because anyone with a disability can access every place on campus. And since there's room for wheelchairs in every room, that means they are fairly spacious and airy, which is very attractive."

The entirety of Raven Landing is ADA-accessible (American with Disabilities Act), allowing anyone to live anywhere in Raven Landing, Motter says. Designed by Bettisworth North Architects and Planners, Inc., Raven Landing was also designed to naturally form a community for retired, active seniors in the Fairbanks community. Located at 1222 Cowles Street, Raven Landing is centrally placed near Downtown Fairbanks at the corner of Airport Way and Cowles Street. This area of town is a core community district--near hospitals and clinics, across the street from the library, near several schools, on the trail system, and a major road corridor, along the transit route, and near several retail centers.

Launching Raven Landing

The Raven Landing Senior Community is one of the first projects in Alaska to address the needs of active senior housing with an aging in place concept, Motter says.

The Retirement Community of Fairbanks was formed in 2004 by Karen Parr, president of the organization, and a group of her friends to answer the need for a continuous-care retirement community in the Fairbanks North Star Borough. The organization formed with the goal of building an independent multi-unit housing complex, along with an assisted living facility.

CB Bettisworth, principal architect and founder of Fairbanks-based Bettisworth North, was asked to assist the Retirement Community of Fairbanks in finding and designing a location for their project. The Retirement Community of Fairbanks and Bettisworth North worked with Weeks Field Development Group, a developer specifically formed for this project, successfully submitting a proposal to the City of Fairbanks to develop and finance the first phases of the Raven Landing Senior Community along with an unrelated more than 150-unit affordable housing complex on the same thirteen-acre land that replaced the dilapidated multi-family housing complex known as Fairview Manor.

The first $5.1 million apartment building of the Raven Landing retirement community opened to Fairbanks seniors fifty-five years and older in 2010 with twenty units ranging in size from 720 to 910 square feet, Parr says. In four construction phases, Raven Landing to date has seen the completion of sixty senior independent...