Lasell Village, a retirement community on the campus of Lasell College in Newton, opened about five years ago.

Retirees have long flocked to sunny places like Florida and Arizona to spend their days relaxing on beaches or playing golf.

But some now are choosing to spend their golden years at retirement communities on or near college campuses, where they can take classes, socialize with students and faculty and actively participate in the community. In Massachusetts, which has numerous top-notch colleges and universities but was the only state to lose population in the last U.S. Census, fostering such a choice could be golden opportunity.

Spotting the trend years ago, Gerard Badler is hoping to convince more leaders of colleges and universities across the country to embrace residential developments for people 55 and older – so-called active adults – that are closely tied to their institutions.

The idea is to create communities that provide an intellectually stimulating environment for aging residents who want to be lifelong learners, Badler explained.

Badler, managing director of a Newton-based company called Campus Continuum, has traveled to different college campuses in recent years to promote the concept and is currently conducting an online consumer survey to identify colleges or regions that baby boomers would most like to reside near as they approach retirement.

The survey also asks participants to pinpoint the amenities they prefer. Badler hopes to use the survey results to approach colleges and universities that are identified as being in high demand.

There are between 20 and 30 retirement communities that are linked to colleges across the county. The majority are continuing care communities, meaning that they include housing for adults who require assisted living services or full-time nursing care.

But according to Badler, few of them are designed specifically for healthy, active adults and even fewer are tightly integrated with an academic host.

“There are no active-adult communities tied to a college campus anywhere in the Northeast,” Badler said.

Badler said he wants residents living in such communities to be active in the community by teaching courses, mentoring students or volunteering elsewhere.

“We want to make sure that the relationship between the academic host and the retirement community results in a lot of intergenerational activity,” he said.

Such developments could appeal to schools that are searching for new sources of revenue. Schools could lease or sell unused land to developers and charge fees for resident use of facilities like the library or fitness center or for maintenance services likes snow removal or landscaping.

There could be other financial benefits, according to Badler, who noted that residents living in the communities might also make donations to the college.

The communities could offer non-financial benefits, as well, providing new housing options for retiring faculty and adding to the diversity of the academic institution, Badler explained.

Badler helped form Campus Continuum about 18 months ago to serve as a community organizer for schools that are interested in establishing on-campus residential developments. The company’s founder, David Carlen, has over 20 years of experience in real estate finance.

Another company principal, Robert Chellis, has worked with various colleges contemplating retirement housing projects, including Harvard University, Connecticut College in New London, and the University of Maine at Orono.

Schools that hire Campus Continuum get assistance with various tasks, including conducting market research, seeking proposals from real estate developers, handling negotiations with developers and marketing the new residences.

In addition, the company can also develop and manage “lifestyle programming” for the people who will eventually reside in the new community. Once the community is built, the company will provide a liaison between the residents and the academic institution.

“The establishment of a well-coordinated campus-affiliated community is complicated not just in terms of construction of the retirement community, but also in working out relationships … with the host institution,” said Paula Panchuck, who is the dean of Lasell Village, a retirement community on the campus of Lasell College in Newton.

Panchuck said Campus Continuum has pulled together a team that can assist colleges and universities with the complex task of establishing a campus-linked retirement community.

“Since Lasell Village was sponsored and managed by the college, we had a sense of what we wanted to do and how to go about doing it. That is not true of all institutions,” said Panchuck, who has done consulting work for Campus Continuum.

Badler, who has visited a number of retirement communities across the country, said he is very familiar with Lasell Village. Residents of Lasell Village, which opened five years ago and includes a skilled nursing care facility, are required to complete 450 hours of course work as part of a learning program. Residents can fulfill the requirement by taking courses at the college or at the village, including art and physical fitness classes, or by doing some type of public service.

Despite the benefits that supporters tout, cities and towns do not always welcome retirement communities. The opening of Lasell Village, for example, was slowed by lawsuits. The college is still battling with the city of Newton over whether the community should be tax-exempt.

In October, the Weston Zoning Board of Appeals rejected a proposal by Regis College to build a 356-unit luxury retirement village. The board denied variance requests by the college, saying that the project was too dense and massively out of scale. Regis College is appealing the decision.

People who want to participate in Badler’s online survey can visit www.campuscontinuum.com.