Village Breeze | Sept/Oct. 2024

https://www.lagunawoodsvillage.com/files/download/news_documents/VB-SEPT-OCT-2024-WEB.pdf

STUDYING ‘ELDERS’
Cortese’s theory soon was backed by scientific research. His search for information led him to the University of Southern California, where he proposed the university do a study about what older adults wanted—and more importantly— needed in a retirement community. In return for the study, Cortese would give USC $50 for each unit sold to establish a program to study gerontology. A study was commissioned and, for nearly a year, teams of researchers delved into all aspects of retirement. The information was turned over to Cortese, becoming part of his program for Leisure World and elsewhere. Impressed by its recommendations, Cortese donated $4 million to USC to permanently endow a chair to create Rossmoor Cortese Institute, the first gerontology school in the U.S. “Ours is the first community in the world that is tied to the academic study of people’s needs versus their wants,” said Dean Dixon, chief executive officer of the Laguna Woods History Center. “Prior to this, developers were selling to wants. But if you’re going to market to people who are going to age out in your community, you have to anticipate their needs. So, from day one, ours was the first community in
the world to have on-site medical care for residents.” As Medicare and other means for getting medical services came into existence, plans to build a 150-bed hospital commenced. Other needs Cortese identified, according to “Fulfilling Retirement Dreams,” were security, worship facilities, convenience, recreation and freedom from home maintenance responsibility.

TARGETED MARKETING
Cortese was attracted to the Moulton Ranch property because it was raw land, unconstrained by any other development within a city, which he  encountered with his previous projects. “It was under county government, and he could get as much land as he wanted, and in the process of doing that, could develop it the way he wanted to develop the most important aspects of the community,” Dixon said. Leisure World Laguna Hills was marketed to upscale retirees (or those who aspired to be), as evidenced by Cortese’s use of affluent idioms, Dixon said. “During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the
term ‘leisure class’ evolved, and parents who struggled financially to feed their kids during that period were retiring in the 1960s.