Anchorage

A new start: Anchorage church opens senior housing complex

When St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Anchorage decided to build senior housing on its hill overlooking Lake Otis Parkway and Tudor Road, it chose an unusual design: windows that not only look outside from apartments but inside to a long hallway.

It was part of an idea to maintain community among people who have been friends for decades. When the blinds are down, it means privacy, said the Rev. Michael Burke, the rector of St. Mary's.

"But if you open it up…" Burke rapped his knuckles on the glass. "Next thing you know, people are having coffee together, reading the newspaper and everything else."

Built-in opportunities for interaction are at the heart of the Thomas Center for Senior Leadership, a 15-unit apartment building recently completed on the St. Mary's lot. Its communal structure is designed for people 62 and older with few or no limitations, though Burke said it is also designed to let people "age in place."

Sunday afternoon is the public grand opening event for the center, the culmination of a decade of planning by church leaders trying to find a new way to care for aging congregants, though anyone can apply to live there.

For years, the church has tried to build "circles of care" around older members of its congregation. That includes sending people to homes to cook, clean or visit, Burke said.

But then those people eventually go back to their own homes, leaving the elder in a big house with decades of memories, Burke said. The church watched elders who had founded rotary clubs, food banks and other charitable organizations drop out of the organizations they founded, bogged down by the demands of maintaining a home in their old age.

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"We started wondering, what could we do to continue to support their leadership in the broader community?" Burke said. At the same time, church friends were wondering if they could grow old together, not alone.

What followed was years of one-on-one conversations with St. Mary's elders in their living rooms about what they wanted to see in a housing project. Now those ideas have grown into a three-story building just down the hill from the church.

From $3,000 to $5,000 a month, the rent is pricey, though Burke said prospective residents should compare the range of home ownership costs. Rents are expected to cover operational costs including housekeeping, utilities and 10 weekly meals prepared by a staff chef, Burke said.

On the first floor, a craft room sits in a sunny spot at the end of a single hallway. There are alcoves along the hallway — "little porches," said Ron Pollock, a member of the center's board of directors. Artwork from the child-care centers at St. Mary's will eventually line the walls; the center's proximity to the church's child-care programs will mean frequent young visitors.

At the other end of the hall, crews were finishing a lounge area with dining tables, bookshelves and a big-screen projector, all next to a commercial kitchen. Growing food in a community garden next to the building will be encouraged.

A resident adviser, like a resident assistant at a college dormitory, will live full-time in the building, Burke said. While caregivers can live on-site, the development stops short of qualifying as an assisted living facility, which Burke said would come with a host of other regulatory requirements. But he said the building is also designed to be fully accessible.

While living in individual apartments, the building is designed to allow people to share common spaces and interact easily through features such as the windows that look into the hallway, Burke said. Those shared-space ideas are rooted in the co-housing movement, which has led to developments like Raven's Roost in Anchorage and Raven's Landing in Fairbanks.

Mark Romick, director of planning and program development for the Alaska Housing Finance Corp., said the St. Mary's project fills a niche in a housing market that is seeing rising demand in all areas, though he noted past studies by the agency that found that about a third of Alaska's seniors needed some type of assistance to afford housing. As of this week, more than 900 seniors were on a statewide waitlist for public housing.

But Romick said that as state and federal housing resources dwindle, it's increasingly critical that faith-based organizations get involved.

For senior housing, St. Mary's hopes to be a model, Burke said.

"Somebody had to go first," Burke said.

A $5 million donation from two longtime parishioners, Tay and Lowell Thomas, covered the bulk of the construction and start-up operational costs for the project. The Thomas Center is a nonprofit subsidiary of the church, which is itself a nonprofit and is exempt from property taxes, Burke said.

Over the next several months, Burke said the church expects a "rent-up" process. He said interviews will focus on the needs of the prospective residents as well as what they'd like to contribute to the community.

Burke expects the center to add a few residents a month. It takes time, emotionally and physically, to move out of a home of 40 years, he said.

One of those future residents may be Nancy Sydnam, 86, a retired family physician and longtime parishioner at St. Mary's who has lived on Sand Lake since 1955.

When she looks out her window, Sydnam sees the lake swing where her daughter once played. She can see where her four children used to swim. It's hard for her to leave, she said.

But she's having trouble keeping up her house. The idea of shoveling snow this winter is daunting.

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"Sometimes you have to move on, whether you want to or not," Sydnam said.

Sydnam lives alone with her Labrador, named after the English poet Vita Sackville-West. On Friday, Sydnam was readying her home for a move, though she said she's still deciding if she wants to commit to the Thomas Center.

She said she was impressed after taking a tour of the building, and that for her, the rental price was affordable.

"It's nice to be with people you know … and (they've) made it so you're not isolated," Sydnam said. "You're not shut in a room."

Devin Kelly

Devin Kelly was an ADN staff reporter.

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