Thank you to the committee for inviting our firm. I feel like we are at the opposite end of the spectrum, and the table was set very nicely to lead this up to where we are. We are not experts on seniors' living. We are not experts on health care. We are experts on life experiences: how we enjoy them on a day-to-day basis and how we apply what we've learned in the entertainment industry to resort living, as well as, now, to seniors' community living.
I'll leave the expertise to the people who deserve the expertise. We are at the design end of the spectrum, where we are trying to create environments for places where people want to live the rest of their years, post-career.
The opportunity came to us as a project in Florida. There was a community being built, but the entrepreneurial spirit of the owners who were developing it had a question that they were struggling with: If we provide the best care, and if we provide the best housing type, what is the environment in which people want to live? When they have a choice, where will they want to live? If they decide they are going to move more than 15 kilometres from where they raised their family and have their friends, Florida is that big jump. The big question for them was, why would people come here?
If we could pull that issue apart, aside from the distance they had to move when they relocated, the question is, what was the choice they were really making? They were looking for a place where they could live the next 20 to 30 years of their life, with new family and friends, building a new society around what their next few years were going to be like.
The key question here is, what are we trying to achieve? I have only two examples to point to for you right now, but I'll tell you that since these issues came up through discussions in the last two or three months, and the media caught on to this, people from the retirement home industry—many of you here are involved in that—and from the development industry have been asking how these two things come together.
We don't know how that's going to influence what your committee is considering. We don't have a clue. What we are doing is sharing with you a very real discussion that's going on. People want a choice. The boomers, right now, are driving that. That wave started in the early 1990s. We saw what was happening in Arizona, California, and then moving into Florida. The boomers are now at the peak of that wave, maybe a little past the peak, and they are driving the question of choice. They are choosing earlier. They want to choose earlier, because they don't want to move somewhere in the end stage of their lives, when they really need care. They want to start earlier and start a new life, and be sure that where they move to has the rest of the things, those essential ingredients that you have all been talking about.
They want to age in place, with their new friends, and of course they also want their family to be able to join them whenever they please. Isolation becomes an issue. They don't want to feel like they are in a community where the seniors live behind a wall, and the rest of us are driving on the streets nearby. That's a key ingredient when we design these communities. It's a community that is inclusive.
I'll talk about the two examples that I want to cite. One is where we really learned and tested our craft on this subject matter. That was at The Villages in Florida. When I met them, they had 12,000 residents, mostly in trailers, park side model trailers. They now have 120,000 residents living in three distinct communities, each one with its own set of services and commercial areas to support their everyday living.
There are 216 golf holes on 34 golf courses. There are community centres, a hospital, numerous memory care centres, and numerous assisted and full-care health care facilities. We had nothing to do with any of that.
They realized that when they brought people to live in a new community, they were going to want to stay. They made sure that they were given that opportunity to stay and to not have to leave unless they chose to. That was 22 years ago.
The second project is in Hamilton. I was telling Ron that it was like sending a message out into space to see if there's other life. Twenty-two years ago we wondered if what we were doing in Florida resonated with anybody. Twenty-three years later, I got a call from a guy in Hamilton who was asking me exactly the same question they asked us in Florida: “I'm wondering what a community for seniors would look like if Disney designed it. What would that feel like?” He said, “I imagine it would feel like a resort.” I said, “Okay, now you have to go down and see what...”.
We can't take all the credit, honestly, but that way of thinking has permeated the discussion on what boomers and others are trying to do, or on the decisions they're trying to make.
The project in Hamilton is 144 acres. There's a charity housing project already there, which is not sustainable, so as those people age in place and leave the community, they are being replaced with new residents, boomers who are buying or renting property, and who expect to live in an environment similar to the one I just described—Canadian-style and in Hamilton, somewhat urban, not suburban.
I welcome you to ask any questions. Pictures would have been a lot better, but I'd be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you.