March 22, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Many Hillers prepare for move to Hill at Whitemarsh
by KRISTIN PAZULSKI

In a month, Nancy and Steven Bauer will leave their historic Victorian home, where they have lived for 37 years, for the manicured senior living village of the Hill at Whitemarsh.

In their Chestnut Hill home, bordered by a neat lawn and a short, hairpin fence at the curve where Evergreen Avenue turns into Navajo Street, the couple, Nancy, 77 and Steven, 83, has raised two children and established a professional and social life in Philadelphia and its small town, Chestnut Hill.

But on April 11, they will join about two dozen other couples and singles from Chestnut Hill who, from mid-March through the summer, will cross the city line to live at the Whitemarsh residence.

On a Wednesday in early March, Steven and Nancy, who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and runs her own Web site-based nonprofit, WomenMatter, took a few moments to chat with the Local. Steven, a retired corporate executive for an international pharmaceutical company, watched CNN while Nancy did most of the talking.

Though a bit nostalgic about the memories her home brings back, Nancy was upbeat and ready for the transition to their new, one-floor apartment. Her only complaint was the tedious little errands that a move requires.

In preparing for the move, the Bauers are having their old couch reupholstered and stuffed, and during our interview, Nancy took a phone call from an appraiser who is coming to determine the value of their 1911 Steinway baby Grand piano that sits in the living room.

“We’re un-stuffing the house,” Nancy said. “We’ve never thrown anything away.”

Although parting ways with some of the memorable pieces the couple has collected over the years is sad, Nancy’s nostalgia was coupled with the acknowledgement that her home was ready for a new family.

Nancy said that watching the rooms change with her growing family was interesting through the years. One room went from the kids’ playroom, to her son’s rock band practice room, to a post-college apartment. Now it’s an office for Steven.

“It’s a house for all ages and stages,” she said. “As our lives changed, we just reassigned the rooms to fit different purposes.”

The family who purchased the house, Nancy said, is a young couple in their 30s with two young children. And although she said it was weird to see the “for sale” sign on their front lawn, she said she felt comfortable passing on their home to a new generation.

“They are at the stage we were when we moved here,” she said.

The new 12-acre Hill at Whitemarsh property is welcoming a “freshman class” into its 266 residences. These include 180 apartments, 48 cottages (smaller townhouse-like homes that are grouped in clusters of four to six), and 38 villas (a larger home, usually standing alone).

Judy McGruther, the director of Hill at Whitemarsh, was unwilling to give a range of costs for residence at the Hill because of its complicated financial system, but did say costs start at $300,000 per year. “For starting under just $300,000, you can become a member of our community,” she said.

Nancy and Steven chose to move into a Hill apartment because they did not want to leave their house to go to another house. Their move ensures that any potential health problems that could crop up will be made easier by their new residence, and since Steven already has a weak right leg that requires the use of a walker (the result, not of age, but of injuries after an unfortunate dive for a ping pong ball in 1999), a one-floor apartment was most appealing.

The Hill at Whitemarsh also provides on-site rehabilitation facilities, assisted living and nursing care for its residents when needed. Nancy said this, and just living with other seniors is, in a sense, an insurance policy for their future.

“Everyone who’s lucky enough to get into their late 70s and 90s, is living together, and anyone of us could be taking care of others,” she said. “We’re all in the same position.”

Of the 266-units at the Hill at Whitemarsh, about 24 will be filled with senior Chestnut Hillers, said Sara Frank, a spokesperson for the Hill. Another 20 units will be former Wyndmoor residents and four will be filled with Mt. Airy-ites.

That leaves more than 40 vacancies, likely homes of couples or single seniors who have spent their adult lives raising children and weaving themselves in these tight-knit communities.

Loretta Witt, the real estate agent with Prudential Fox and Roach, Inc. that sold the Bauers’ house, said the clogged market is making it more difficult to put “aggressive” pricing on a home.

“There are more houses on the market, so anyone putting their home up for sale finds themselves in a stuffed market,” Witt said. “It’s not a good idea to put an aggressive price on a house, because buyers are being conservative.”

Both Bauers had no problems selling their home, although Nancy did joke that when they moved here in 1970, the real estate market was in a slump, and now, 37 years later, they are selling their home during another slump.

Though the real estate market is slumping nationwide, Susie O’Neil, another realtor with Chestnut Hill’s Prudential Fox and Roach branch, said homes on the local market are selling.

She said she has handled about 20 Hill at Whitemarsh-bound residents from Chestnut Hill, Wyndmoor, Fort Washington and Blue Bell. Of those properties, which ranged from $300,000 to “many millions,” O’Neil said only four of those homes are left on the market.

“So many of these people have already listed and were sold, some as long as a year ago,” she said. “There wasn’t a clog — they entered the market in an orderly fashion.”

She did say, however, that “careful planning must be done about a price.”

“You can’t set a high price and hope the market is catching up,” she added.

Had some of the homes been sold when the market was stronger, they might have sold for more.

Though the Bauers are moving on to a senior community, Nancy said she doesn’t view this as the couple’s final stage.

“The way you approach the Hill at Whitemarsh is the way you approach life,” she said. “Everyone starts out thinking, ‘oh no, not me, I’m too young for this.’ We’re leaving the house we lived in a long time, but I don’t see this as the last step on the way to Jacob F. Ruth.”

Contact staff writer Kristin Pazulski at 215-248-8819 or Kristin@chestnuthilllocal.com.