Retirees moving to the Knoxville area are invaluable economic and social assets
by Barry Henderson
Casey Jones and his wife retired to West Knox County in 2000. They built their dream home in Lake Shore Meadows in Choto, near Lake Loudoun, on two acres "that just really suited us."
An electrical engineer with a management background, Jones says he and his wife "wanted to be near the Smoky Mountains." They looked all over East Tennessee and Western North Carolina and North Georgia before they picked their retirement spot.
The odd twist, which is not as odd today as it was a few years ago, is they retired here from Florida. "We had spent much of our adult life in Southern California and Florida," Jones says, "and we found it dull, flat, and hot.
"The seasons here were appealing," he says, but the main draws besides the mountains were "the beauty, the friendliness, and the cost." The property cost was low, relative to any of the areas they researched, giving them more with which to outfit their retirement home, entertain themselves, and pay their future bills.
Once ensconced in the Knoxville area, Jones says, there were some good surprises. "There are more nice golf courses than I'd expected, the scenic aspects of this part of the country were even better than we'd expected, and the people were even more friendly." The one downside he experienced, he says, was that "the summers are warmer and more humid than I'd thought, even though I'd been warned."
Jones and his wife have joined a growing flock of migratory retirees who've nested in the hills and vales around Knoxville. Though pretty weather and scenery, high hospitality and low prices surely have something to do with the pattern, there are lots of other factors. How the trend began and how much it may mean to the region is a subject Metro Pulse found worth exploring.
Who's going where and why?
In 1900 one of every 25 Americans was age 65 or over. At the end of the century, that ratio had expanded to one in eight. And over the last 30 years, the numbers of those elderly Americans have been increasing at a faster rate in the Southeast than in the rest of the nation—about four percent faster, according to a survey commissioned by the TVA Rural Studies Program in the late 1990s.
Although Florida remains the greatest single magnet state for elderly retirees in the region, Tennessee has kept pace with the rest of the Southeast in the growth of its elderly population. It is one of seven states in the southeastern Sun Belt projected to have a significantly higher proportion of those older persons in the first few decades of the 21st century.
It's not that Tennesseans are growing older faster than other Americans, it's that more people from other states are moving here to retire. East Tennessee is getting more than its share of those in-migrating retirees. Some of them are returning to this area, having moved away for jobs and earned their pensions in other states. Those and lots of other retirees are finding East Tennessee attractive as they look for a list of retirement "amenities" outlined in an Auburn University study of migratory retirees that was published in the mid-90s.
Those "amenity" criteria include:
 Lakes, beaches, and/or mountains
Temperate climates
Good medical care
Quality housing at reasonable prices
Generally low living costs
Safe, quiet neighborhoods
Recreational attractions
Cultural attractions
Convenient shopping
Look down that list again. The Knoxville area offers every one of those advantages except beaches. It also has another advantage stressed in the Auburn study—a steady stream of tourists in the pre-retirement 45 to 64 age group who are visiting the Great Smoky Mountains National Park or passing though on the Interstates but stopping long enough to look around at the TVA lakes or the rolling foothills that surround them.
"The community is not going to be able to attract retirees unless [it is] first able to attract them as tourists," the Auburn research states flatly.
That statement is borne out by the experience of property developers who have emphasized recruitment of retirees in the establishment of new communities near Knoxville that cater to people searching out those amenities and advantages.
Who's filling the bill?
The first of those specialists was Fairfield Communities, which acquired and developed Fairfield Glade, about an hour's drive from Knoxville in Cumberland County east of Crossville in the late 1960s.
"Fairfield Glade started marketing the Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois areas. They gave people there an introduction to the climate, living, cost, taxes, etc.," says Crossville Mayor J. H. Graham, who says that approach was "a Godsend to Cumberland County."
The development was slow, but steady. "Land and home sales have continued to increase even during periods of economic downturn," Graham says. Fairfield Glade now has about 3,000 residences occupied, arranged around a lake and four golf courses. The population in the 2000 census tract that includes Fairfield Glade showed 44 percent of the 6,569 residents to be age 65 or over, with a median age of 63—the oldest in any census tract in the state.
"Those people trade in Crossville," Mayor Graham says. The city adopted a 2 3/4-cent local option sales tax to take advantage of that trade. That might sound almost predatory, but Graham says it resulted in extremely low annual property taxes, now just $2.01 per thousand dollars of assessed valuation, which benefited the entire county, including the Fairfield Glade retirees, virtually all of whom own their homes.
Graham also says the whole county has prospered from the amount of volunteerism that arose from the retirement community. He ticks off the work of volunteers in "reading programs in the schools, hospice care, all kinds of recreational programs" and says that just having the retirees available as a resource, with loads of experience and time on their hands, has improved the quality of life for everyone in the area.
The spirit of volunteerism rings in every community with concentrations of retirees, according to the Auburn study, which lists the benefits of attracting retirees. Increases in the tax base, bank deposits, retail sales, church contributions, overall employment, and available "expertise" are on that list.
The study also says retirees won't strain social services, health care services, school systems, criminal justice systems, or the environment. The health care component is important, because retirees may consume more of those services than younger people. They are better able to pay for them through Medicare and retirement insurance programs and, therefore, to stimulate the improvement of the entire health care base.
Rhonda Rice, executive vice president of the Knoxville Area Chamber Partnership, says the effective spending power of retirees, the amount of their disposable income, is enhanced when they move here from locations where living costs are higher, and their buying habits spur the economy of the region.
Though the newer retirement communities are mostly peripheral to Knoxville and Knox County—in Loudon, Blount and Sevier Counties principally—the retirees in those communities spend time and money in the city. She says the time is nearly as important as the money.
"A lot of younger retirees bring experience that helps fill voids in the labor pool, and they are becoming actively involved as volunteers in the arts and with the non-profits and the schools.
"I don't know if you can put a price on that," Rice says.
There is no concerted active effort on the part of the governments or chambers of commerce to recruit more retirees to move into Knox and surrounding counties, but the commercial developers' marketing strategies
and the word-of-mouth extolation of retirement opportunities here communicated to friends and families "back home" by the current retirees goes a long way.
Who's selling, who's buying?
"We didn't think we had to," says Fred Forster, the Blount County Chamber's president and CEO of the idea of selling the county in any large-scale, organized way to prospective retirees.
He says that an A&E cable channel special series on best places to live in America in which Maryville made the top 10 a couple of years ago went a long way to attract new retirees to the area. So did the publicized retirement of ex-Gov. Don Sundquist, a West Tennessean, to Laurel Valley, a golf resort in the picturesque hills at the northwest edge of Townsend, which bills itself as "the Peaceful Side of the Smokies." Townsend is presently the only part of Blount with a high (30 percent) concentration of retirement-age residents.
The Maryville/Alcoa area, however, has enjoyed its own retail and construction industry boom from the Tellico Lake retirement communities along the county's western border in Loudon and Monroe Counties. And Forster says that an unanticipated bit of assistance has come to Blount from retirees from the Detroit area. The ex-Detroiters have been voluntarily working to recruit business and industry from their part of the North. The automotive parts plants that have become Blount's leading industry caught their eye, Forster says.
Blount's first retirement-focused development per se was Royal Oaks, a golf resort-style gated community at Maryville's western edge. Begun in 1990 by developer Mike Ross, who sold his interest to other investors in 1993, it has had more than its share of ups, downs, and controversies, but it remains a pretty, well-cared-for neighborhood with a population that is of varying ages—some retirees and some younger career people.
Ross moved on to Tellico Lake, where his Rarity Bay opened in 1995 on 900 acres with a golf course and boat docks. He says there are 1,600 home sites at Rarity Bay, now home to about 500 people with an average age in the 60s.
It lies south of Tellico Village on rolling lakeside property along state Route 72, and Ross says 90 percent of the homes are occupied by permanent residents, most of the whom are retirees. He says about a quarter came from Tennessee and three-quarters from out of state. The majority of the latter, he says, came from Midwestern states.
One who migrated to Rarity Bay, taking early retirement at age 58 from Union Carbide in Connecticut, is Mike Cleverdon. He and his wife settled on Tellico in 1998 after "we looked at a number of lakes from Oklahoma eastward.
"We lived on a lake in Connecticut and liked the lake [Tellico], the mountains and the cost of living." No income tax was "a plus," he says, but when they settled in they saw a "problem with the schools. Monroe County has one of the poorer school systems." Even though they have no kids or grandkids in school there, Cleverdon says, "We pay about half the [property] taxes here for a home of about the same value [as they owned in Connecticut], and if we had to pay more through the property tax to get teachers here more money, we'd support it."
Rarity Bay homes run in the $350,000 to $400,000 range, less than the $500,000-and-up homes Ross envisions for Rarity Pointe, a 250-acre tract on the other side of Tellico Lake near the dam that will include a full-service marina. He is trying to swap about 200 acres down the lake for 115 acres of TVA land, committed to public use, to expand the Rarity Pointe acreage. That plans meets with opposition from among existing residents in the immediate area because of the public-use commitment, but Ron Hammontree, executive director of the Tellico Resource Development Agency, which has managed the land for TVA, says the trade would be a "win-win" for the public and Loudon County because the 200-acre site has better access. It has road frontage. The TVA acreage is reachable by water only at this point. "I think of it as a very appropriate swap." The request has not yet been approved or denied by TVA.
In between the "Rarities" on the west side of the lake is Tellico Village, the first and largest of the Tellico Lake developments, opened in 1984. Winston Blazier, the general manager of its property owners' association, says it includes more than 4,500 homesites, three membership restaurants, covered boat slips with a gas dock, and three private golf courses. About 2,700 homes are occupied, he says. Ninety percent are retired persons in their late 50s or older. Again, most came from the Midwest.
All but 800 of Tellico Village's 5,500 acres are in Loudon County, and it currently accounts for about a fifth of that county's property tax base, Blazier says. Ross says the Rarity Bay and Rarity Pointe properties will ultimately account for another fifth of that tax base, making the Tellico Lake retirement community a true cash cow for the rest of the county.
Appreciation of the value of land and improvements on lake properties in established retirement communities is contributing to the speed of such tax-base growth.
Gene Fischer, a 70-year-old retiree who moved to Tellico Village in 1995, says he grew up on a lake in Michigan and always wanted to retire on a lake. He saw the Tellico area on a business trip in 1986 and came right back with his wife to buy in. He gave $70,000 for his waterfront half-acre then and says, "I wish I'd bought a couple more." He says the lot he built his house on would probably bring something like $300,000 today.
Ross says that, in spite of such steep appreciation curves, comparable properties in other parts of the country cost more to buy and pay taxes on than they do around Knoxville. "There's simply more bang for the residential buck here," he says, and people all around the country are becoming aware of it.
The more, the merrier, says TRDA's Hammontree, who has watched the retirement boom take place from his official vantage point. His agency reviews requests for proposals for the development of land set out for such purposes when the Little Tennessee River was dammed to form Tellico Lake in 1979. TVA, which acquired the land at that time, must approve any TRDA recommendations.
Hammontree says retirees, as much as anyone else, could "bring a lot to the area. They're active in about every program around here, historic, educational, recreational, library improvement, and all."
There's no end to the prospect for more of the same, either. The Auburn study points out that the Baby Boomer generation, which is approaching retirement age, ensures that the number of older migrants will increase in the near term.
"...And they will have multiple income sources, better education, better health, earlier retirements, and longer lives than the generation currently retiring," the Auburn report says. "They will continue to be a favorable choice for economic development."
Who's looking ahead?
Its success assured, Tellico Village is "looking at all our amenities to find what residents want and what prospective residents want," Blazier says. The current $816 annual assessment to each property owner (membership in the association is mandatory) gives them tennis privileges and very reasonable greens fees and boat slip charges, besides maintenance of the common areas and support of the management costs. There is no plan for Tellico Village to expand around its boundaries. "We want to mature what he have," Blazier says.
The design concept that Fairfield Glade introduced to the region, that Tellico Village advanced, and that Ross's Rarity projects fostered, first in Blount County and now practically area-wide, is "to be active-adult friendly in any way we can." He says that golf and tennis are important features "and, of course, lake property is magic."
Ross also says he found retirees to be environmentally conscious, particularly as to the condition of the lake and lakeshore, leading to his adoption of voluntary measures that exceed TVA requirements. "I consider myself an environmentally friendly developer, even though I guess the two don't go together," Ross says with a sheepish grin. It's good business, he admits.
He says the advertising his company has done is aimed at the older, more affluent demographic segment. The ads have included billboards on I-75 and I-40. "We got a lot of retirees interested through billboards," he says, and calls I-75 "a draw to this area for travelers, just as I-95 is a draw to north-south travelers through the Carolinas."
Ross is also developing Rarity Meadows on 300 acres in McMinn County, with lots for homes in the $150,000 to $250,000 class and an affiliation with an existing nearby golf course, and Rarity Ridge on 1,400 acres of former government land in the Roane County section of Oak Ridge. The latter will contain its own shopping areas in the new "village" concept, and will include areas of $130,000 to $200,000 homes for younger workers and $300,000 to $500,000 homes for more mature, up-scale families, Ross says. Both of those projects are just getting underway.
On the drawing boards is another, even more ambitious development known as Rarity Mountain on 4,500 acres outside of Jellico east of I-75 just this side of the Kentucky line. Billed as a "residential resort," the Mountain is to include two golf courses and upscale land and homes in a price range that is yet to be finalized. Ross says it's slated to start up in 2004 and be open in 2005 or early '06.
Rarity Mountain is such a major development that it's been approved for its own Interstate interchange, scheduled to go out for bids in mid-June. Getting the interchange approved and paid for by the state and federal government was "a lot of hard work," says Jay Willoughby, a development specialist who is assistant county executive in Campbell County. He says that "basically, the economic impact sold it" to the governments involved.
"We're on the edge of our seats," Willoughby says, because of the economic stimulus that Rarity Mountain is expected to provide. "We're looking at hundreds of jobs, both construction and permanent," he says, besides an astronomical boost to the Campbell tax base if the project proceeds and succeeds. He says the revitalization of Jellico's older downtown section is already being mapped out by a consultant firm in response to the projected demand for service and sales outlets there.
The whole idea of courting retirees is showing signs of becoming a scramble among developers and communities in East Tennessee to get there "firstest with the mostest," as the expression goes.
Meanwhile, back in Tellico Village, Gene Fischer is sitting back in his chair, with any sort of mad scramble being just about the farthest thing from his mind. He's admiring his view. "I love it," he says. "Right now, I'm looking out over the water...I wouldn't trade it for anything."
March 8, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 19
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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