Demand For Senior Living, University Projects Still Growing Despite Development Challenges

The university-senior living trend is still picking up speed in 2026, even as new development remains tough to notch.

Construction lending and costs are keeping the level of new development low in senior living. The number of units under construction in the first quarter of 2026 amounted to just 0.4% of total inventory, according to NIC MAP data. But as hard as growth via development is, senior living designers and architects are still partnering with operators looking to open and operate communities on university campuses or very near them.

Earlier this year, there were between 85 and 100 senior living communities located on or near university campuses with some form of formal relationship, according to a count from Andrew Carle, president of Carle Consulting and formerly lead faculty for graduate curriculum in senior living administration at Georgetown University.

Carle’s workload is evidence that the trend is still picking up steam this year. While he typically would get as many as three consultation requests from universities to pursue senior living projects over the past several years, in 2026 alone he’s working with five, with another five that are in the early stages of outreaching for a formal engagement with operators. 

Senior living architects also are reporting that university projects are still hot and getting ever-hotter in 2026 as development is hard to notch elsewhere.

Architecture firm Perkins Eastman is actively pursuing designs for up to four university and senior living partnerships of varying intensities, which has become a “significant uptick” for the firm over the past two years, according to Associate Principal Greg Gauthreax.

Edenwald Senior Living is developing a 125-unit community in Baltimore, Maryland in partnership with Goucher College. The community has attracted enough interest to sell out units even before its planned September groundbreaking.

“We expected to spend a year pre-selling the 125 apartments. We hit our financial goal in seven weeks,” Mark Beggs, president and CEO of Edenwald, told Senior Housing News. “We completely sold out in four months.”

Another operator, Brightview Senior Living, who broke ground on a community in partnership with Notre Dame of Maryland University (NDMU) in Baltimore, the decision to pursue this kind of development is due to the mutual benefits for both sides.

“There’s been documented research showing that it actually increases longevity and lifespans to be around younger generations, and younger generations have an awful lot to learn and gain by mixing with the older generations as well,” said Austin Koo, development director at Brightview.

‘Why wouldn’t you pay attention?’

Larger trends in the U.S. are pushing more colleges and operators to consider projects that combine senior living and academia.

Over the next 15 years, there is an estimated decline of 10% to 15% of college students nationwide, according to research from RNL. Carle called it an “enrollment cliff,” but said that senior living projects can offset the decline in students and serve as a revenue source for years down the road.

“University retirement communities can produce what we call non-tuition revenue anywhere between $1 million and $3 million per year,” Carle said. “If you’ve got something that could be contributing a couple of million bucks a year for the next 99 years, or even 50 years, why wouldn’t you pay attention when you’ve got a piece of land that you’re not using?”

Brightview is still developing its first university project, but the early momentum of those plans have prompted its leaders to look for more similar opportunities. According to Koo, residents are drawn to these communities’ vibrancy and an active lifestyle.

Goucher College approached Edenwald to enlist it in the project prior to the pandemic, but truly began serious discussions at the end of the pandemic. The university faces declining numbers of potential students in the future, and partnering with an operator was a way to continue keeping people on campus.

“Colleges really need to be looking to the future. If their traditional student is no longer the traditional student, where can they go to serve to fulfill their mission?” Beggs said. “That would be an older population. It just makes sense, and Goucher understands that.”

According to Carle, universities also have access to underutilized land that senior living operators can develop on, adding yet another collaborative win for both sides, with leases that can go up to 99 years, such as the case for Brightview and Goucher College.

Starting early, slow development

The new wave of university and senior living partnerships are driving occupancy and pre-leasing at respective locations at faster rates than anticipated.

According to Koo, Brightview typically starts its pre-leasing process until it is six months into construction. Because of the level of demand it saw, it has already opened pre-leasing and started building out a waitlist shortly after breaking ground on the community.

University projects can take as many as 10 years from concept to completion, as such projects are subject to board approvals and other regulatory hurdles, according to Carle. That long timeline has served as a challenge for university projects, but the frozen state of development in 2026 blunts that downside. Even for more traditional senior living projects, the time from groundbreaking to opening is about 29 months on average, according to NIC MAP data.

Brightview and NDMU originally began collaborating in 2019, and since then has engaged the surrounding community.

“Seeing ourselves as a fixture in the community and a long term neighbor. We found it very important to talk through and make sure that the community was feeling good about what we were going to develop,” Koo said. “At the same time we were balancing the desires and the concerns from the city as well and from the university.”

Edenwald negotiated the business terms of its community with Goucher College in around two years. Because of how well the community reaction and demand has been for its university retirement community, Edenwald is considering renovating a nearby acquired community into a satellite location, and Beggs envisions possibilities of working with other universities around Baltimore in the future.

The model itself is viable, Beggs said, and beginning negotiations now would be necessary due to the general length of time these projects take to complete, though caution is warranted with some university partnerships.

“There’s definitely a market for it. I think everybody realizes that not every institution of higher education is going to be a good partner,” Beggs said. “I have complete confidence that Goucher will last as long as Edenwald does. We will always be a university retirement community.”

Based on the sheer number of older adults reaching the age where they need senior living, Carle anticipates the number of university retirement communities could potentially quadruple in the next decade.

“They’re all highly educated. I can’t stress enough just how early this is in the product life cycle, and the growth potential is just enormous,” Carle said. “This is the tip of the iceberg.”

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