Top Retirement Spots With Today's Retirees (continued)

Downtowns
• Chicago

Boomers are the first generation of Americans in which many members of the middle class have spent a lot of time in European cities, "loving them and wondering, 'Why can't we live in our cities like this?' " says Mr. McIlwain at the Urban Land Institute. Today, he's doing just that. After leaving Maryland, Mr. McIlwain initially moved to a 2,200-square-foot condominium near Dupont Circle in Washington before downsizing again this summer to a 1,000-square-foot loft.

"It's the smallest space I've lived in since college, but it's a really neat part of town," he says.

People now heading into their 60s, as opposed to older retirees, are also more used to -- and attracted by -- living among people of different ethnic backgrounds, incomes and ages, Mr. McIlwain adds. The recent high fuel and energy costs could push retirees to cities, as well, he says: "More people who are in the process of choosing where to live will be thinking about that. Do you want to go off to a mountaintop in North Carolina -- knowing you have to drive to get to anything -- or go to a city where the price of walking...and public transportation is probably going to go up less quickly than cars?"

Kyle Ezell, an urban planner who lives in downtown Columbus, Ohio, has written a guide called "Retire Downtown," due out this fall. He has coined the term "ruppies" -- retired urban professionals -- who "rattle off all the things they did this week," Mr. Ezell says. "They volunteered at the theater as an usher. Or they served on a task force for helping the homeless. Or they worked at a marathon handing out water. They just can't believe how much activity they're involved in, and they can't help it because it's all right outside their front door."

Chicago is drawing retirees from its suburbs and beyond, despite the price tag: A two-bedroom condo downtown costs roughly $500,000 to $2 million. With office buildings in the South Loop section of downtown getting new life as luxury residences fronting the city's two-year-old Millennium Park with views of Lake Michigan, "we've heard from a lot of developers that roughly a third of the high-rise condominiums going up are being purchased by retirees," says Ty Tabing, executive director of the Chicago Loop Alliance.

Paul Dravillas, a 69-year-old retired software consultant and professor, moved to a South Loop condo with his wife, Patricia, two years ago after selling their home in Orland Park, Ill. The couple had always enjoyed city activities, especially using the sailboat they keep in Burnham Harbor on Lake Michigan. "But it was a pain to come down here with the parking and the traffic," Mr. Dravillas says. Now, they ride their bikes to Millennium Park and attend free concerts on weekends. "Those are things we haven't done for a long time," he says.

Mr. Dravillas concedes that it was tough to shed one of their two cars. "It's easier to jump in your car and go to the mall than it is to wait for the bus," he says. "But I have my senior bus pass. There are adjustments, but it's 90% positive and not even 10% negative."

Mixed-Use Developments
• Atlantic Station

Feel uncomfortable in the big city? Then try "urban light."

The past decade has seen the rise of "live-work-play" communities, real-estate parlance for mixed-use developments that combine offices, housing and retail space. Such communities often bridge city and suburban living; that means there's usually a convenient parking garage where you can keep your car, and the streetscapes are a little less gritty than in many downtowns.

One of the largest such developments is Atlantic Station, a 138-acre redevelopment of the former Atlantic Steel Mill site, just north of downtown Atlanta. The mill, founded as Atlanta Steel Hoop Co. in 1901, operated until 1998. Today, Atlantic Station has about 2,500 residential units; about one million square feet of shops, restaurants and movie theaters; almost 865,000 square feet of offices finished or under construction; 101 hotel rooms; and 11 acres of parks, including a small lake.

Since part of the attraction is the walk to work, Atlantic Station has largely been marketed to a younger crowd, with condo sign-up parties at trendy bars, beach volleyball tournaments, clothing chains targeting twentysomethings, and a martini-lounge scene at the development's Twelve Hotel & Residences. But retirees are moving in, as well. (In fact, so many retirees have moved in or expressed interest, Atlantic Station's developer now is considering building an "active adult" community at the site that would be geared to older people, according to an Atlantic Station spokeswoman.)

Tom and Suzanne McDermott, ages 77 and 71, relocated to a two-bedroom condo in Atlantic Station from the Atlanta suburb of Roswell after Dr. McDermott retired from dental practice several years ago. They were drawn by both their past and their future: Mrs. McDermott grew up about a half-mile from the new development in a neighborhood of bungalows, but the couple also "wanted the convenience of city living," Dr. McDermott says.

They walk for exercise around the lake, stroll to restaurants for dinner, and take a shuttle bus to the nearby Woodruff Arts Center (for plays), the High Museum (for art exhibits) and Atlanta's rail system (for transportation to the airport). Dr. McDermott also started volunteering at the new Georgia Aquarium, a five-minute drive, and can walk to the Georgia Institute of Technology, where his son has season tickets for basketball and football games.

The McDermotts say they aren't homesick for the suburbs -- yet. One big reason: They also have a family cabin in Cashiers, a mountain town in western North Carolina, where they occasionally escape the summer heat. "I'm not sure if we could live in this place full time if we didn't have it," Dr. McDermott concedes.

Hobby Farms
• Oklahoma and Florida

At the other extreme from city living are so-called lifestyle farms -- farms run mainly for pleasure, rather than as a primary livelihood.

"There's this yearning to get back to a simpler life, to play in the dirt, to know a little more about where your food comes from," says Carol Ekarius, who ran a commercial farm with her husband in Minnesota for a decade before moving to Colorado to do smaller-scale livestock farming and write about it in articles and a book called "Hobby Farm." "The same kind of people who like to go to a farmer's market and buy organic food like to get into hobby farming," she says.

Sue Gray is a horticulturalist in the Tulsa County office of the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service. She was fielding so many questions from inexperienced people interested in farming that she started a class several years ago called "Green Acres" to offer help. Most of her students are "in their early 50s, planning for retirement, and want to fulfill a dream they couldn't before due to the mortgage, children and college educations," she says. Her role often is to stop them from biting off more than they can chew.

"People come in and say, 'I need 20 acres of land, and I'm going to grow 10 acres of vegetables.' I say, 'Do you know what's involved in growing 10 acres of vegetables?' You generally need one person for every acre."

But people exploring farming as a second career often bring their own strengths to the venture. "A lot of people are retiring in their mid-50s, have a lot of energy and bring a lot of business skills to farming," Ms. Gray says. "I'm seeing a lot of people with a different view of marketing that is unique."

One of her star pupils, Pam Von Rhee, a 52-year-old native of Massapequa Park, N.Y., now lives on a 29-acre spread she and her husband bought four years ago in Coweta, Okla. He still works full time as a geologist, but she has tackled farming full time, planting 150 blackberry bushes two years ago that yielded 170 pounds of fruit last year, much of which she turned into jam and pie fillings that sold out at local markets.

Ms. Von Rhee notes that her blackberries aren't certified as organic ("you have to know what was processed on the land five to seven years before planting"), but she grows her crop without using chemical products and does the weeding and harvesting herself.

"It's amazing -- I learned how to do irrigation," Ms. Von Rhee says. "It's all a learning process, and it's something you love."

Some developers see farms as simply places to play in the country. This fall, St. Joe Co., a Jacksonville, Fla., real-estate development company that owns more than 850,000 acres primarily in northwest Florida, is rolling out WhiteFence Farms-Red Hills, the company's first farm development, about eight miles from the middle of Tallahassee.

St. Joe calls it "new ruralism." Instead of homes arranged around a golf course, the plans call for several groups of as many as nine "farmsteads" (61 in all) to ring orchards and fields tended by an on-staff farmer, says Kevin Fox, St. Joe's senior vice president of development. The plots themselves would be relatively small -- three to 10 acres each, at a cost of $250,000 to $750,000 -- and the clusters are to be connected by tractor trails.

Residents "can farm if they want to," Mr. Fox says. "In all honesty, most people won't. I expect some people will build a barn or stable and put horses in it or buy a tractor." They can hire help through the community's on-staff farmer if their ambition overwhelms their ability.

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