John P. Fowler, executive director of Holliday Fenoglio Fowler, L.P. (HFF), one of the nation’s most successful commercial real estate intermediaries, knows something about the essence of a good business deal and the highest and best use of a property. 


And so when Fowler met with Chris Wise of Chatham five years ago to discuss the redevelopment of a vintage 1950s motel that Fowler and his partners owned overlooking pastoral Woods Hole Harbor, the real estate analyst was characteristically vigilant. Like most modest, compact structures of its genre, the Nautilus Motor Inn and Restaurant had outlived its vision. Wise, founder of Wise Living, innovative independent retirement communities on Cape Cod, sought to redevelop the 54-unit hotel and 175-seat restaurant into a stately 43-unit senior retirement community in walking distance to quaint Woods Hole village.


On paper it was a perfect match – the right property for the right project. But as any sage seller or investor would ask: Show me the money. 


Wise did. 


The highest and best use of the property, and others like it, he successfully contended, was a Wise Living community based on market need (no one is getting younger); a desire among seniors and Baby Boomers advancing to retirement age, for equity ownership, choice and control in stark contrast to traditional, cookie cutter Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs) where options are limited; and the eye-popping per-acre value of the land by Cape standards. 


In the case of the Nautilus Inn in Woods Hole, the per-acre value is teeing up to be the most valuable in town. Wise, armed with Wise Living per-acre values in other communities, had Fowler’s unbroken attention. Wise Living communities in Chatham (Park Place), Orleans (Orleans Place) and Harwich Port (The Melrose) are the most valuable properties in those towns per-acre, based on town assessments. No surprise that the last three Wise Living communities were sold out within six month of completion – two of them during construction.


Winning Them Over


“It has been a net winner for the Town of Orleans,” says Town Planning Director George Meservey in reflection. “The project has been successful, it has brought great value to the town, its impacts are as advertised, and it brings in more in property taxes to Orleans than it demands in services.”


Fowler was sold. 


The project is now in the preliminary permitting stage, and the often-protracted Cape Cod Commission, one of the toughest land-use regulatory bodies in New England, unanimously sanctioned the project with uncharacteristic high praise and in record time.


“It is an awesome piece of real estate,” Fowler said in an interview with Banker & Tradesman. “But like many structures of its day and kind, there is no amount of lipstick you can put on the pig in its present form to make it a first-class property. We purchased the property with the very intent that we would eventually raze the structure and build some sort of multi-family housing – high-end luxury condos or what we’re now proposing to do with Wise. Clearly, we believe a Wise Living community is the highest and best use, even in this economy, and it is positioned well when the economy picks up.”


That’s not a bad story to tell in these days. 


“The economics of knocking down an obsolete seasonal hotel on a great parcel and building a new one simply doesn’t work from a financial perspective on a season of four or five months,” says Fowler. “You can hardly justify the cost, much less make a profit.


“In contrast, the Woods Hole Wise Living project, and others like it, is positioned well when the economy turns around. It’s all there. It’s a very appealing location for this use. Absolutely.”


Convincing Fowler and the guarded Cape Cod Commission on the Wise Living concept was no small task, but one carried out with great success. Commission representative Roy Richardson called the Wise Living concept “well-designed and researched,” and member Jay Zavala termed it an “excellent project” – adjectives seldom heard at Cape Cod Commission hearings. 


Selling Your Grandmother


Convincing Wise’s grandmother years ago to move from her Manhattan apartment across from Lincoln Center on West 66th St. to entice her to relocate to a traditional senior retirement community proved to be far more vexing. But for the dutiful Wise, necessity was the grandmother of invention. 


At first, the woman, a retired Barnard College teacher with a doctorate in education, would have nothing to do such a move. But yet like many her age, she had few resources to remain in her home – just the dim prospects of requiring more care and assistance in years to come until finally the day came when she was forced to a nursing home for health reasons. 


Wise was promptly asked to leave, with a stern glare from his grandmother that could have burned a retina. She was furious. 


“I don’t want to move in with a bunch of old people!” she barked at the time. His grandmother was 89 then.


Not one to yield, Wise returned home to Cape Cod and promptly regrouped, re-evaluating his grandmother’s forceful resistance to orthodox senior housing and analyzing the traditional model to see if there was a more sanguine option. His exhaustive research, creative, out-of-the-box thinking and detailed execution caught his headstrong grandmother’s attention. He began in earnest searching for a surrogate that offered choice, equity and control in senior housing, the finest and least expensive option for independent living, personalized health care, a cornucopia of pay-only-for-what-you-need options, like private dining, housekeeping and transportation, 24-hour staff, maintenance-free living, proximity to village shopping, restaurants, churches, libraries and other essential town amenities, saving on car trips – all at or below the cost of owning and maintaining a private residence. 


Wise envisioned a senior complex connected in walking distance to a village center. Finding nothing, he did what any loving grandson with vision and skill might have attempted; in 1990, he built a prototype in Chatham, The Chatham House­­­­ – the start of Wise Living.


Today, Wise Living offers one- and two-bedroom unit ownership, ranging in price from $200,000 to $750,000 at independent living retirement communities across the Cape. In addition to the Woods Hole project, these include: Orleans Place, within walking distance to several restaurants, two banks, a health clinic and Skaket Corners Shopping Plaza; Park Place in Chatham, with 29-condominium units, an easy stroll to pastoral Chatham Village; The Melrose of Harwich Port, situated in an historic former summer resort hotel near the lip of Nantucket Sound in the town center; and the 18-unit Harwich House nearby, accessible to convenient shopping and lifestyle needs. Additionally, a 55-unit Wise Living project is being proposed in Brewster on a 10-acre parcel off Route 6A, and proposals are in preliminary stages in Sandwich, Bourne and Barnstable.





New Neighbors


Since Wise’s discriminating grandmother embraced the concept, hundreds of others have as well. 


The Rev. Gene Pickett, former president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, recognizes character and substance when he encounters it. And so when he and a longtime friend, Ed Mangiafico, retired CEO of the May Co. California, a subsidiary of May Department Stores, met with Wise years ago to discuss his concept for reinventing retirement, these two prudent men and their wives were all ears with a liberal dollop of skepticism. 


Vetting retirement options nationwide like an executive about to make an analytical board presentation, Mangiafico had come across a newspaper ad for Wise’s inventive retirement community concept that promised ownership equity, choice of options and independent living, all free from the maintenance challenges of home ownership. All this in a village setting that makes for a seamless transition with requisite community connections. 


Too good to be true?


“I thought the idea of settling into a place in a Main Street setting where you could make new friends and start over while you were still in good health to make such decisions was smart thinking,” noted Pickett recently. “We needed to know more.”


Enter Wise, a man then in his mid-30s, tanned, in shorts and toting a mobile phone that appeared to be affixed to his head. They all met at The Melrose Inn community, then Wise had to excuse himself to answer a call – the phone was ringing with more queries and interest.


“I turned to my friend, Gene, and told him that this guy was too young to figure out the fine points of retirement living,” recalls Mangiafico, not one to suffer fools gladly. “I suggested that we be polite for the moment and listen.”


The Picketts and Mangiaficos are good listeners, resolute judges of character and know a winning concept when they see one for those in their mid-60s to 90s.


“We were convinced,” says Mangiafico, who has become a close associate and advisor to Wise. The Mangiaficos and Picketts each bought units at Chatham’s Park Place before construction was completed. The two couples live there now, and are involved in numerous community and church activities.


“This has given us great peace of mind,” adds Pickett, sitting with his wife, Helen, on a comfortable couch in his friend Mangiafico’s well-appointed living room, near a deck that offers sweeping views of Park Place. “It has also taken responsibility and worry off the shoulders of our children.” 


Local control is at the core of the Wise Living concept. The communities are built and managed by Wise Living, whose mission is to weave seniors back into the fabric of the community, allowing them to live more productive lives. About 70 percent of Wise Living residents have lived within a 5-mile radius of their new home for at least 20 years, affording comforting continuity, and about $20,000 flows annually into the local economy from each Wise Living apartment, boosting the economic health of town centers. 


“My intention,” says Wise, “was always to keep it simple.”

GREG O’BRIEN is a freelance writer and autho, and is at work on a book about the challenges facing seniors, from housing to medicare.