As they both approached 70 years of age, the Rawsons began putting their names on waiting lists at retirement communities in and around the Midlands of South Carolina. But a friend suggested to Bill, a retired economics professor at the University of South Carolina, that he and Joann take a look at a place called The Pines at Davidson.
When the Rawsons made the 100-mile trip up I-77, they knew they’d found their next home. The big move didn’t come for another seven years, in 2009, but it actually was a little bit like coming home. Bill, now 75, had earned his bachelor’s degree at Davidson College in 1956.
“We couldn’t be happier,” says Joann, also 75 and a retired nurse. “I get up in the morning and say to myself, ‘Thank God I’m here.’”
The Rawsons, who celebrated their 47th wedding anniversary this week, are part of a significant graying trend in the Lake Norman area. Between 2000 and 2010, the population of people in Cornelius, Davidson and Huntersville who are least 62 years old spiked by 139 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That far outpaces the overall 87 percent population growth for the three towns.
James Johnson Jr., one of the nation’s leading demographers and a professor at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, is not surprised.
“Retirees usually look to relocate to amenity-related areas,” says Johnson, director of the Urban Investment Strategies Center at the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, and the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship. “You have a pretty nice area there.”
Joann Rawson agrees.
“There’s just so much happening here,” she says. “We go to ball games and lectures at the college, and my husband is even auditing a theology class. It’s such an advantage to have a connection with a college of such quality.”
Davidson College, though, is just one of Lake Norman’s quality of life attributes, Johnson says.
“The other thing retirees want is to be within an hour’s drive of world-class health care,” he explains. “People with the wherewithal to retire wherever they want will look for those two things: access to amenities and to quality healthcare.”
And with Bank of America, Wells Fargo and other Charlotte-based behemoths sending longtime employees into early retirement, many of those displaced workers are likely to look favorably toward Lake Norman, Johnson adds.
“You have people who may have taken a golden parachute and don’t want to live in Charlotte,” he says. “Again, these are retirees with money to spend.”
But ultimately, a graying population’s spending will tilt the Lake Norman area’s economy, Johnson predicts.
“A real big issue is whether there is parallel growth in elder care and other senior-related services,” Johnson says. “It creates a new kind of economy, which is both an opportunity and a challenge. There will be new jobs, but you need to find people with the skills to fill those jobs. A whole new industry will develop.”
Take, for example, elderly people who decide to stay in their homes even as their health deteriorates.
“They’ll need handymen to come and do things around the house,” Johnson says. “Things as basic as replacing doorknobs with handles. For someone with severe arthritis, a doorknob might as well be a lock.”
Doorknobs are not much of a challenge for Rawson and her neighbors at The Pines.
“We have everything we need here,” she says.
Having everything costs money, though, and Johnson notes that a growing senior population’s spending power can impact those who are without.
“The downside,” Johnson says, “is would the working class being priced out of the housing market?”
Johnson adds that, coming out of a recessionary housing slump, he doesn’t see that happening anytime soon. But if Rawson’s family has anything to say about it, that slump won’t last for long.
“Even my six-year-old grandson says he’s going to move here when he grows up,” she says.
