
That repeat-customer potential could prove a competitive edge for Riverwalk Residences, which will vie for residents with another seniors-only development nearby that will open sooner. “Many of our Aqua projects were sold to people we think, in five to 10 years from now, will be a target for us,” he says. Some of Roy’s luxury condo customers in east Fort Lauderdale may be future residents of his downtown high-rise for seniors.
#Satori fort lauderdale plus#
With Roy leading the way, Ocean Land Investments has successfully developed a series of small waterfront condominiums in east Fort Lauderdale branded with derivations of the word “aqua.” They include three condos on Isle of Venice Drive – eight-unit AquaVue, 16-unit AquaLuna and 20-unit AquaMar – plus 22-unit AquaVita on Hendricks Isle and 35-unit AquaBlu on Intracoastal Drive. His company is best known for building condos. “You see a lot of people training two hours a day because they don’t work. “These people are way, way more active.” Among other amenities, Riverwalk Residences is designed with a large gym. “The new generation of seniors, 70 to 75 to 85, are different from the seniors we had in our properties 25 years ago,” he says. It’s right in the heart of the action.”Īction, not just relaxation, is part of the modern definition of retirement, according to Roy. “The beauty about the project we’re doing in Fort Lauderdale is, it’s a couple hundred feet from Las Olas. “The new generation, they want to eat well, they want the best of everything, and they want to be able to walk to everywhere,” Roy says. He is betting that similar senior-living developments will succeed in Fort Lauderdale and elsewhere in South Florida – but by luring baby boomers, who have a less sedentary definition of retirement than prevailed in the past. Roy is president of Fort Lauderdale-based Ocean Land Investments Inc., which he founded in 1990 after developing high-rise buildings for seniors at pricey urban locations in Montreal. “When you walk in there, you won’t think you’re in senior housing,” Roy says. But the building’s sleek high-rise design by Miami-based architecture firm Borges & Associates will bear little resemblance to traditional retirement housing. It looks like an old place where old people live,” says Jean Francois Roy, the Canadian-born developer behind Riverwalk Residences. “Ninety percent of the retirement housing in this country is two, three stories, and outside town. Residents who are elderly and affluent will have luxury apartments with easy access to everyday amenities downtown, including the city’s linear park along the river, the Las Olas Boulevard shopping and dining corridor, and the Broward Center for the Performing Arts. The seniors-only development on the riverfront downtown, called Riverwalk Residences of Las Olas, is scheduled to open in 2021 after 30 months of construction starts in summer. Renderings of a 42-story high-rise coming to downtown Fort Lauderdale resemble a luxury condominium tower more than a residence for senior citizens, and the resemblance is purely intentional.

The high-rise design of a seniors-only residential development downtown will put a new spin on old notions of retirement housing.
