Amenities, home plans and landscaping evolve to meet market needs
Kolter Homes – a leader in developing next-generation, highly-amenitized, master-planned active adult communities in the Southeastern U.S. – continues to evolve its active adult product to meet the changes and needs of the 55+ market. When Cresswind Georgia at Twin Lakes, located in Hoschton, Georgia, opens for sales in spring 2020, homebuyers will experience the next evolution in homes, amenities, landscaping and lifestyle.
“When the active adult market started in the 1940s and 1950s, it wasn’t at all lifestyle-focused,” Kolter Homes President Robert Rademacher said. “The main focus was to get out of the big house. Homes typically included two bedrooms, a dining room and living room, and they were more cut up as far as the flow from room-to-room.”
As the active adult market has evolved, propelled by the Boomers, homes and clubhouses evolved with it. Over the past 20 years, home plans have changed drastically. Both the living room and formal dining room have become ideas of the past. Homes have become more open concept. Whoever is doing the cooking doesn’t want to be cut off from the family during holidays and family gatherings.
“When designing homes, we pay attention to everything including the shortest distance from the garage to the kitchen,” Rademacher said.
Additionally, today’s active adult doesn’t want lawn work, they want to travel. They aren’t focused on a big lawn, but instead, they are focused on the rear of the home where they can have privacy on a covered patio or porch to entertain family and friends.
Cresswind plans offer the ability to add an 8- to 16-foot covered porch on the back of the home. Having a big front porch was a 1960s and 1970s concept, and now homebuyers would rather spend 
the money on outdoor living with privacy.
“Meeting your neighbors and seeing everyone is done at the clubhouse now,” Rademacher said. “We include streetlights and wide sidewalks in our communities to encourage and support walkability.”
Storage space is another popular necessity for homes. By including plenty of flexible space, such as garage extensions or a bonus loft, buyers gain choices on how to make the home live for them. For example, having permanent storage space is important.
“At some point in life, you don’t want to crawl through a hole in the ceiling to get to the attic and the decorations that are stored there,” Rademacher said.
As a solution to this, Cresswind communities offer bonus lofts with permanent staircases. These lofts can be used in a variety of ways, for storage, as a finished secondary bedroom or even as a craft space that is out of the way. Loft areas offer expandability and an area that you don’t have to clean every day.
“A loft is an inexpensive way to expand a house to meet our buyers’ needs, without going into a huge second story,” Rademacher said. “This meets their needs and keeps the price of the house down.”
In Georgia, homebuyers can often add a basement, and this offers additional flexibility. Whether they want to add a complete guest quarter and still have a ton of space left over for storage, a living room with a guest room or an entertainment room, buyers like the options and flexibility that are available.
According to Rademacher, active adults do not always need or want a large home. In response, Kolter is introducing a new collection of homes for Cresswind Georgia at Twin Lakes to cater to a new group of homebuyers. These 30-foot-wide homes will be situated on 40-foot homesites and mixed in among the bigger homes and lots.
The lifestyle component of active adult communities has become more important and more dynamic. Where bocce ball and horseshoe pits used to be the craze, today’s clubhouses are more like a cruise ship on land with programmed activities, clubs and plenty of amenities. Kolter Homes employs a full-time Director of Lifestyle, Mark LaClaire, who focuses on the residents’ experience, as well as furthering the amenity-rich environments and award-winning quality of all Kolter lifestyle facilities, programs, staff and operations.
Pickleball has become the hot amenity at active adult communities, and Cresswind Georgia at Twin Lakes will be one of the largest facilities available.
“It is very fast-growing and has been so successful that we are offering a lot of courts,” Rademacher said. “This means there will be less wait time on the courts, and we can work to attract national tournaments to Atlanta.
“People like pickleball because it is more social, there are fewer injuries and pretty much everyone can play this sport. It is a great exercise option,” Rademacher concluded.
Clubhouses have also become more flexible than ever. At Cresswind, clubhouses are expansive spaces with tons of flexibility for multiple activities.
“Where previously we had an aerobics room, craft room, fitness room, pools inside and out, we now build much larger fitness centers and create the maximum amount of open space as possible allowing the absolute most use of the space,” Rademacher said. “For instance, we might host a big concert Saturday night and then Sunday pull in dividers for six or eight clubs to meet. We can give people the space they want and serve a multitude of functions.”
Amenities also include event lawns, indoor and outdoor pools and more. At all Cresswind communities, close attention is paid to the grooming and landscaping throughout. Homebuyers might not realize it at first because it just looks right, but the communities always look terrific because the landscaping is generous and well maintained.
By comparison, it is easy to see the fantastic evolution that active adult communities have made over the years. To learn more about the unbeatable active adult lifestyle coming soon to Cresswind Georgia at Twin Lakes, visit www.KolterHomes.com/new-homes/active-adult-community-cresswind-georgia.
