Rooftop brewpubs and pickleball courts. Dwellings that minimize carbon footprints. Personalized services that start even before a move-in. These are the kinds of new lifestyles and amenities that senior living operators are showing boomers in an effort to attract them in the coming years.
In 2026, the oldest baby boomers are turning 80 while the rate of growth remains limited. Simply put, the next few years represents potentially the best demand and supply dynamic the senior living industry has ever seen. Now, operators have a once-in-a-career chance to move them into their communities – but demand alone won’t have the boomers lining up outside their door. Instead, senior living operators must consider the lifestyle that boomers will want and create that inside their communities.
Although some speak of the boomers as a monolithic group disrupting multiple long-held senior living practices with their fast-evolving preferences, the group is made up of individuals who vary greatly in terms of what they actually want, from luxury services at their fingertips to post-acute care and coordination on demand.
As senior living operators well know, no community can be all things to all people. That is why LCS Chief Marketing Officer Rick Westermann believes that operators must “pick a lane” and differentiate themselves to stand out to the incoming generation.
“That experience that you’re giving on site, that one-on-one engagement, understanding the person in front of you and how they can live a better life at your community and how you help them plan for the next five years to make this significant life change… that, each and every day, is going to be where you create the most value,” Westermann said during the Senior Housing News Sales & Marketing Conference last week.
LCS communities like Friendship Village Tempe in Tempe, Arizona, are taking that message to heart as they seek to “add more fun per square foot,” he added. The community has amenities including a rooftop brewpub that helped the community win a 2023 SHN Architecture and Design Award.
More than a thousand miles to the north, in Portland, Oregon, RoseVilla is embarking on a very similar mission to serve the incoming group of older adults, albeit with a different spin. The organization is moving ahead with a strategic expansion that will see the launch of two new neighborhoods with net-zero energy footprints. The community also has a program to offer services to residents on its waitlist.
“Both of those really are evolutionary steps,” RoseVilla CEO Glen Lewis said during the SHN Sales & Marketing Conference. “Boomers are really … wanting to engage differently.”
Underpinning both of these examples is a belief that senior living operators of today will have to show boomers what they can offer them, likely in ways and on channels they haven’t before.
Pickleball, rooftop views and cold brews
When LCS began renovating Friendship Village Tempe several years ago, Westermann said adding a rooftop pickleball court was an early priority. But that wasn’t what current residents wanted – instead, it was what Cole Marvin, Executive Director of Friendship Village Tempe, and LCS Development thought the boomers would want when they moved in, Westermann said.
“Now, we have pickleball pros that live with us, and are calling their friends to come play,” he added.
As it sought to prepare for the future, LCS didn’t exclusively poll the community’s current residents to determine what tomorrow’s residents would want. The company – with the help of Director of Market Research Mindi TenNapel – studies the wants and needs of older adults in markets across the U.S. That process has lent real actionable data to decisionmaking and has helped the company fine-tune its offerings for a new generation.
Like many other senior living operators, LCS is challenged by the age of the communities it operates, usually between 15 and 20 years old. What LCS often can control is how to refurbish and refresh those aging communities.
The operator’s market research showed that new residents desire choices and variety, such as not eating in the same dining venue every day. That thinking led it to create the rooftop dining and drinking venue at Friendship Village Tempe, Starfire Brewery, which slings white cheddar ale nachos, short rib tacos and house-made beers, among other fare.
“What do you do after your game of pickleball on the roof? Well, you go over to the rooftop brewery and you have a beer with citrus that was grown on the campus, and then you get a prime rib sandwich,” he said. “That lifestyle, that’s what we should be building for.”
LCS is currently hiring two full-time social media staffers to grow its presence on sites like Facebook to showcase these efforts as they happen.
“It’s a great channel for us where it wasn’t 10 years ago,” he said.
Friendship Village Tempe via Alise O’Brien Photography; Spellman Brady & Company Friendship Village Tempe via Alise O’Brien Photography; Spellman Brady & CompanyProviding autonomy, showcasing the lifestyle
Engagement with the boomers is at the center of RoseVilla’s next chapter. The organization often has open dialog with residents and their loved ones as it sets future plans, and that has led to multiple insights it might not have otherwise gleaned. For example, RoseVilla’s residents are deeply passionate about multiple causes, from environmental stewardship to concerns over artificial intelligence use.
“Residents we’re seeing now – the boomers – more than anything want a lot of autonomy to their life,” Lewis said. “They want to be able to continue to make decisions and be involved in the process and feel a purpose in what they’re doing.”
Those preferences have shaped the organization’s five-year strategic plan to focus solely on more net-zero projects and incorporate more ways for older adults to engage at different points in their journey, like the operator’s waitlist services program TakeRoot.
To Lewis, the “magic” of senior living comes through in programs and committees that give residents more control over their lives and homes. And like Westermann and LCS, he believes that operators should tell those kinds of stories in their marketing. For example, RoseVilla showcases residents on its dragon boat racing team.
“Those kinds of stories, whether you’re doing it through social media or whatever channel you’re using … are really important for boomers to connect to,” he said. “The reality is that I think our customers, boomers in particular, are paying attention to those stories to try to picture what their life is going to be like.”
The post New Residents, New Marketing Strategies: LCS, RoseVilla Embrace Change as First Boomers Turn 80 appeared first on Senior Housing News.
