Active adult lifestyle builds community through full schedules

Mixers on Wednesday, games on Monday, holiday celebrations — active adult communities stay busier than most college campuses.

Aging can be a challenging, and sometimes lonely, experience for older adults. By offering a dynamic connected lifestyle for seniors, active adult communities offer a fresh alternative that promotes healthy engaged living.

"So many people long for a community, but to actually go out of their way and plan stuff or reach out can be very intimidating. A lot of times, you can get set in your ways or just comfortable living the way you're living, but so many people long for and crave friendship — they don't want to just live the rest of their lives, doing that same thing over and over again," said Hannah Braswell, lifestyle coordinator at Overture Cary, a 55-plus active-adult community. "When they're presented with an opportunity like this, where all they have to do is take the elevator down and walk across the hallway to participate in events that are completely planned and completely paid for, it makes it easy to get involved."

At Overture Cary, Braswell is in charge of the bulk of event and activity planning. While the community just recently opened, she's already scheduled a full docket of things for residents to do, including fitness classes, art sessions, and a number of special interest clubs.

For Mike and Nancy Bennett, an active adult community offered the perfect blend of activities and connectivity for their retired lifestyle.

"We are very active, we love tennis and pickleball, and we're also passionate about lifelong learning. There's an 18-year difference between us, and we want to be able to spend as many years together as possible — so health, body, mind and spirit are all very important to us," said Nancy. "We want to be able to just pick up and go and not be concerned about a big house or anything. Here, we're able to downsize into a nice apartment, but it's still active and we still have a sense of community. We're all here because we want to be active adults, so we have similar interests and goals."

Before moving to Overture Cary, the Bennetts lived in a few smaller, similar communities, but found the activity level to be lacking, and a single-family home was getting to be too much to look after.

After visiting Overture Cary and touring one of the apartments, they decided to make the move. While the community just opened recently, Mike and Nancy are already finding their niches. Both of them are taking online classes through local colleges and universities and hope to pull in a few people to host a series at Overture Cary.

In fact, they even talked Overture Cary into letting them bring their old ping pong table to the game room — and it's been so popular, a second one is being added.

"That whole, 'You can't teach an old dog new tricks' is just so incorrect. Some people say that they'd be bored if they retired, but sometimes we feel like we're busier than we've ever been." said Nancy. "There's a room with fitness equipment, game rooms, a pool and everything. A lot of clubs are getting underway too, like book clubs, garden clubs, and the walking club."

The walking club is one of the more popular offerings at Overture Cary, and the town is even putting in more walking trails near the community.

As more residents move in, Braswell will continue to expand the events and activities available with the help of the Ambassador Program, a welcome committee made up of residents that also help brainstorm new happenings for the community as a whole.

"Within the next couple months we hope to see residents really get involved and take ownership of the community and the events," said Braswell. "Our communities are intentionally a little bit smaller. We only have 189 units, so we're all in one building. People can really get to know their neighbors, and it's more of a family dynamic."