Purdue senior development will bring older alums back to campus

A college campus might not be the first place people imagine living after retirement. But Purdue University is planning a massive development that will bring alums back to school for their senior years.

Purdue, which has 575,000 living alumni, plans to break ground later this year on Varcity at Purdue, a 230,000-square-foot community at the school’s Discovery Park District where retired Boilers and community members will begin living in a couple of years.

Varcity at Purdue will be built on 14 acres and include 230 for-rent living units. About 60% of the units will provide independent-living options (apartments, town houses, villas and flats), with assisted-living and memory-care units available as well.

A construction cost for the development and a pricing structure for residents have not been determined.

Amenities will include dining areas, a bar, gym, aerobics space, a pool and spa, pickleball courts, and an outdoor kitchen and grilling station. Residents will also have access to classes and lectures on campus and a school ID card that links to a BoilerExpress debit account that can be used at retail locations across campus.

University officials hope Varcity at Purdue will allow residents and current students to interact and learn from each other. The first floor of the main building will feature shared amenities for students and residents that will include an event design lab, lecture hall, makerspace, lifelong learning space, an early childhood learning center and a work-share space.

“Universities are filled with people who need to learn to teach, so our graduate students or post-docs—all of them—could just gain so much from going to this community and giving a lecture or workshop or even a performance, if that’s what they do, for the senior living community residents,” said Marion Underwood, dean of Purdue’s College of Health and Human Services.

The project got its start when former Purdue President Mitch Daniels asked university deans in 2021 for ideas as part of his Purdue Moves 2.0 initiative. Underwood authored a proposal that led to discussions about building a senior living community on campus.

“The truth is that traditional-aged undergraduates often are not interested in working with aging people. They don’t think they are. They think they know enough from having parents and professors,” Underwood said. “But if we can get them into an internship or into a practical experience with older folks, they often just want it, and it makes them excited to work with older people in their careers.”

Varcity at Purdue will be the first project for McNair Living, which launched in January 2022 and is headquartered at the University of Kentucky. Future Varcity developments are planned at other major U.S. college campuses. McNair Living will require senior living communities to be university-affiliated, with logo and naming rights included.

McNair is a wholly owned subsidiary of Houston-based private investment and management company McNair Interests.

In order to build at Purdue, McNair Living had to gain support from university leadership and each of the school’s deans, said Les Strech, the company’s managing principal.

Strech, who spent years studying longevity and “blue zones” (areas of the world where people consistently live past 100), said intergenerational living benefits both young and old.

Factors that lead to long life include walkability, connection, family and community, which Strech said McNair Living will look to focus on in its Varcity developments.

About 75 retirement communities have been built at universities across the United States since the early 1990s. They include Arizona State University’s Mirabella at ASU, a 20-story tower that opened in 2020 and includes 246 independent living units, 52 health-care units, dining venues, an indoor pool and other amenities.

“Pretty much everything [Purdue is] doing has been done in some way, shape or form elsewhere, in some cases, for 30 years,” said Andrew Carle, an adjunct lecturer at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., who has more than 30 years of experience as a senior-living executive and consultant.

Student involvement

After two years of studies, proposals and focus groups, Purdue University, the Purdue Research Foundation and the Purdue for Life Foundation reached an agreement with McNair Living in March to build the community.

“Purdue has been extraordinary to work with,” Strech said.

Gensler San Antonio and Austin, Texas-based Reach Architects will design Varcity at Purdue with input from 20 Purdue interior design students.

“Purdue interior design students will be true partners in the design of the facility, working alongside professionals,” Genell Ebbini, assistant professor of interior design, said in written remarks. “This is not theory—it is experiential learning at its best, where students can walk over, see the building and work hands-on.”

Michael Rey, managing director of Gensler San Antonio, researched Purdue’s history. He said architectural elements at the Varcity development will evoke the smokestacks, brick and steel from original buildings on the West Lafayette campus.

“For students, when they walk into this, we hope that they really feel like it’s part of the community,” Rey said. “It stretches throughout the community, and so I think it’s different in that regard. I don’t think it’s … a traditional kind of senior living, and I think that’s what’s exciting about it.”

Purdue students studying marketing, health and human sciences, hospitality and pharmacy will also be involved with the Varcity project before and after it opens. A theater area will allow graduate and post-doctoral students to give lectures and provide performing arts students a place to work.

“We’re educating nurses, speech pathologists, dietitians, athletic trainers, clinical psychologists, human services professionals, professionals in hospitality and tourism management,” Underwood said. “So just about every single one of our programs could benefit from an internship at a senior living community like this.”

Underwood added that Varcity at Purdue will help the university retain employees who have older parents and might otherwise need to move away to provide care and assistance.

“A lot of us are raising our teenage children right around the time our parents get elderly and need a higher level of care, and that’s really hard,” she said.

Adding to the district

Varcity at Purdue will be the latest development to take root at the university’s Discovery Park District, a $1.2 billion, 400-acre, mixed-use development on the west side of campus.

When Discovery Park is completed sometime in the late 2030s, it is expected to include research and high-tech manufacturing facilities, retail, a convention center, walking trails and housing options.

Discovery Park currently includes:

◗ Provenance: A community of town houses, apartments and single-family homes with amenities that include a clubhouse, nature trails and restaurants.

◗ Continuum: A mixed-use development that includes 246 luxury one- and two-bedroom apartments with 15,000 square feet of street-level commercial space.

◗ Aspire: An 835-bed apartment complex for students.

◗ Convergence: A 145,000-square-foot, five-story, mixed-use building the university designed to support innovation, collaboration and private-industry growth.

◗ An Ascension St. Vincent neighborhood hospital for inpatient and emergency care.

◗ Squirrel Park: A park featuring an 85-year-old horse barn donated by the Sonny Beck family that has been repurposed as an event venue and potential brewery.

◗ Source: A residential development with luxury two- and three-bedroom condominiums.•