Rhona Guertin likes to think of the next evolution of Elliot Lake Retirement Living as being in the "people importation" business.
When the non-profit corporation unveils their marketing material for their upscale Spine Road condo development, the finance and business development manager suspects they'll have no problem filling it up.
They are armed with a conceptual drawing and a master plan, and hope to start taking rders by next spring and summer, when they suspect they'll be able to start building once they reach the magic number of 60-per-cent occupancy.
"Whether it's retirees or cottagers, that's basically how we're going to survive," said Guertin.
The same ingenuity used by uranium miners to carve this small northeastern city of 11,500 out of the bush in the 1950s is being applied again to take this legendary retirement town to the next stage of expansion.
Though still in the conceptual stages, the project entails 426 acres of former municipal beach property and 12,500 feet of shoreline on the actual Elliot Lake. The phase one development shows a village-style concept of multi-unit residence buildings, townhouses and semi-detached homes on a property criss-crossed with hiking, skiing, snowmobile trails and scenic lookouts.
The architect's preliminary drawing has every unit facing the water with a building facade of sheer glass. They're heralding it as a million-dollar view for an affordable price.
It's an idea they've toyed with since the late 1990s. Now the time is right with a deep-pocketed Baby Boomer wave coming at them for the next 10 to 15 years.
The community is also in a better position to showcase a high-end type of housing for large income earners because of significant capital upgrades to a local golf course, the synergies with a wildly successful cottage lot program, and the opening last fall of a Hampton Inn.
"Our gut feeling is that if the product comes in at the price points that we're hoping, it'll move quickly," said Retirement Living general manager Richard Kennealy, who expects this new product will have a much larger market demand than the cottage lots.
Though he won't discuss those price points, Kennealy said the whole business model is a continuation of what Elliot Lake already has been successful with, "which is affordability."
The corporation has perfected the formula and marketing science of knowing that most of the sale comes from just getting retirement-aged folks "desperate for waterfront property" to make the journey north to see what they have to offer, hoping they'll fall in love with the place.
The fact that the non-profit corporation is taking their game to a new level is evident in the new Retirement Living headquarters.
Once located in a 1950s-era downtown mall, they've moved the market juggernaut to the south end of the tree-lined waters of the lake.
The headquarters shares a commercial entranceway with a shiny new 55-room Hampton Inn, just across the parking lot.
The physical asset is owned by Retirement Living, the franchise agreement is held by their for-profit corporation, Nor-Dev.
Scot Reinhardt, general manager of the Hampton Inn, said the upscale hospitality brand compliments the Retirement Living concept. "It fits the community and our goals and objectives in every way and exceeds what people expect."
Reinhardt said the retirement office had used an independent hotel to house their guests and visitors to the community, but decided to choose the Hampton name among 15 brands because it has among the toughest hospitality standards.
Kennealy, who arrived at the corporation in 1993, has experienced the evolution of the retirement concept. "The depth of this market is quite phenomenal. The demand has not subsided from the day we started."
Of the 6,000 residential rental units in town, the corporation owns 1,500, with an occupation rate running between 92 and 96 per cent. The demand for rental properties is "exceptionally strong" with 2,500 to 3,000 potential clients touring the community from May to mid-October as part of a Discovery Tour package.
Their primary market has always remained the Greater Toronto Area and southwestern Ontario.
"We market very aggressively but are very low-key on sales. When folks come to our community, our primary emphasis on is exposure and education," said Kennealy.
Retirement Living is a pumped-up economic development corporation that has used its marketing muscle to help the city sell cottage lots, make community capital investments and assist in doctor recruitment.
In the early 1990s, with uranium mining clearly on the decline, Elliot Lake's entrepreneurial-minded leaders dreamed up the retirement concept to market cheap homes abandoned by mining families.
A decade later, the city struck a groundbreaking deal with the Ontario government – the Elliot Lake Act – to open up 10 Crown lakes and 404 lots for cottage development on a staged basis. A stringent lake management plan was put in place by the Ministry of Natural Resources to regulate cottage lot density and keep the environmental impacts to a minimum.
A buying frenzy followed on three lakes: Dunlop, Quirke and Popeye, with 260 lots sold as quickly as they could be brought to market. The city provided road and power, but no municipal sewer and water.
Whereas the retirement product appealed to a 50-plus buyer, the cottage project is getting into people in their 40s who are planning for their senior years.
But as novices in this process, the city realized not every lake was environmentally suitable or economically feasible to develop. They are negotiating with the province to "trade off" for other lakes to pursue 600 to 800 more lots. The cottage lot advertising was retracted a year ago when Lakeshore Properties Corp. was mothballed, but outside interest still remains high.
"Although the construction caused a real blip in activity, the real payoff economically is the 260 families in their cottage and homes over time, paying taxes and spending money," said Kennealy.
To service this economy, the corporation wants to build up local healthcare with an aggressive doctor recruitment program.
Dawn Morissette, the corporation's project manager, said it's tricky to get doctors to come to a small city in a rural part of Ontario, but Retirement Living deemed phyiscian recruitment a top community priority. Together with the city, they've collectively invested $1 million in recruitment over the last two years.
The doctor recruitment strategy uses the same playbook to attract retirees and cottagers, said Morissette. "We use a very educational approach on the (retirees community) tour. If we can get them to come to Elliot Lake, our close rate is very high."
Morissette has developed a very clear and defined scope for pursuing physicians and nurtured strong relationships with medical schools in Ontario. "The folks we've recruited are more mature, including some internationals who have already been practising.”
She predicts every citizen in Elliot Lake will have a doctor by year's end.
