Graying CT creates business opportunities for diverse industries

PHOTO | Contributed Kelly Boscarino of Chapter 126 Sports and Fitness in Bristol helps people with disabilities and seniors stay active and healthy. The gym sees major growth opportunities catering to an aging population. It offers specialized equipment like workout machines that adjust to people in wheelchairs.

HBJ PHOTO | John Stearns Paul Finney’s October Kitchen currently preps and delivers healthy foods, like asparagus, to about 200 customers, two-thirds of whom are seniors.

Nora Duncan, Connecticut state director, AARP

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By John Stearns

They make nutritious home-delivered meals, residences more navigable and bodies more agile. They offer home care and companionship and legal and financial services.

They're among the diverse businesses and professionals serving and benefitting from Connecticut's growing population of people 65 and over with products and services that seniors want or need as they live longer, defy their age and seek to retain their independence.

It's more than hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and nursing homes benefiting from the growing wave of seniors — but those are some of the obvious beneficiaries.

“Well beyond the industries that stand to benefit, the entrepreneurs who are keeping their eyes open and are ready to identify these niches, that's really where it's exciting,” said Maureen McIntyre, executive director of the North Central Area Agency on Aging in Hartford.

Less obvious beneficiaries, perhaps, are nonprofit agencies, a potential significant recipient of retiring Baby Boomers looking to give back with expertise cultivated in the corporate world or looking to learn new skills, McIntyre said.

“This is an age group that is very civic minded,” she said.

Meal business hits the spot

Paul Finney is among the Connecticut entrepreneurs feeding the needs of the state's seniors — literally. He's the owner of October Kitchen, a Manchester business that makes healthy meals delivered to customers' homes. A chef, he started the business 15 years ago, and it's flourished. He's looking at expanding his physical location, delivery area and menu and envisions coast-to-coast expansion.

October Kitchen delivers to about 200 customers but has more than 2,000 in its database. Some are busy moms or working professionals, but Finney estimates two-thirds of all his customers are seniors.

“Here, the way that we cook, we use less salt, less fat and sugar, and our whole point is to keep our customers alive and healthy for as long as we possibly can,” Finney said. “I strongly believe that food is energy. Food is also the cutting edge of medicine, and [people's] quality of life is fundamentally linked to what they're nourishing their bodies with.”

October Kitchen represents businesses giving seniors and their caregivers what they want. Seniors want the good, healthy meals minus the hassle of cooking, shopping and driving, while caregivers want peace of mind that family members are eating well.

Watching the Boomers

Steven Lanza, assistant professor in the University of Connecticut Department of Economics and former executive editor of The Connecticut Economy, said businesses are paying close attention to Baby Boomers, who are turning 65 at a rate of about 10,000 per day and who don't necessarily equate retirement with slowing down.

“Businesses are watching that population and seeing what their needs are and adjusting to it,” Lanza said. “It's a matter of looking around and seeing all the kinds of activities that people engage in and just thinking, 'OK, well, if we're going to keep doing these things as we get older, what kind of accommodations and tweaks might have to get made to those products or services with older consumers in mind?' ”

Chapter 126 Sports & Fitness in Bristol has tweaked the fitness model for gyms. Opened last fall as a program under Hartford nonprofit Oak Hill, the gym was built for people with physical limitations, but a disability is not required to join. It attracts the able-bodied, including caregivers and seniors, said Leslie Sanchez, who oversees Chapter 126 as director of IT and new program development for Oak Hill. One couple that works out regularly is in their 90s, she said.

Special equipment not found in typical gyms includes anti-gravity treadmills allowing users to take up to 80 percent of their body weight off their feet to reduce joint impact while exercising and machines that adjust to people in wheelchairs, Sanchez said.

Importantly, Chapter 126 staffers are specially trained to work with people with disabilities, and the environment is unintimidating, she said. The gym also plans sports programs for older adults, including pickle ball, noodle hockey, and indoor bocce ball. It has partnered with AARP to offer members a discount and expects its senior population to grow, Sanchez said.

Home safety, accessibility

Brian A. Cosker Jr., working with his mother's durable medical equipment company, Ellsworth Medical LLC in Windsor, saw an opportunity to serve the elderly by making homes safer and more accessible. He created a separate company, Easy Accessibility Solutions by Ellsworth (EASE) that installs ramps, bathroom modifications and stair-lifts.

He'd been doing modification projects for about 10 years under Ellsworth Medical LLC before launching EASE as a separate company in January.

The National Association of Home Builders says the fastest-growing segment of the residential remodeling industry is home modifications for aging-in-place.

Most of Cosker's customers are 75-plus, he said. Cosker, a certified aging-in-place specialist — a designation from the builders group — creates a safe environment in seniors' homes to help them avoid trips and falls, bathe easier and safer, get up and down stairs via lift systems and more.

EASE does in-home assessments evaluating a home's safety environment and recommends alterations, if necessary.

“Most of the time it's the bathroom,” Cosker said of projects like replacing a tub with a barrier-free shower or creating a step-through tub, raising a toilet seat or adding grab bars.

“There's a 100 percent need for what I do,” said Cosker, noticing larger companies entering the field. “They're just validating what I've been doing for a long time.”

Homebuilder Johnny Carrier, vice president of By Carrier Inc. and chairman of the Home Builders & Remodelers Association of Central Connecticut, said stagnant Connecticut home values have dampened the market for building 55-and-up communities. People need to be able to sell their existing home first, before they buy new, he said, noting that building a new home is somewhat of a luxury.

Carrier has one 55-and-over community under construction and largely sold and built out, the 88-home Castle Heights development in Cheshire, and completed two others in Farmington in the last three years. He'd consider doing another community, but it would have to be the right deal in the right town.

Caregivers and aging in home

With seniors preferring to age in their homes, homecare businesses are among those standing to benefit, said Nora Duncan, AARP Connecticut state director.

About 711,000 people in Connecticut are providing care for a loved one in any one year, Duncan said.

Apps that family caregivers can use to manage care of a loved one from a distance would be helpful, Duncan said. One tool could be AARP's RealPad, an easy-to-use Wi-Fi tablet geared toward people who aren't necessarily tech-savvy.

Financial planning

As people live longer, they also need their money to last.

With Connecticut's growing aging population, Jenny DeRosa Bergeron, financial adviser at Edward Jones in Marlborough, said the company is focusing more on creating income and financial plans that last longer into retirement.

“Many of us in the industry are offering seminars on topics like Social Security strategies or health care in retirement in addition to reaching out to folks that weren't interested in meeting with a financial adviser before they started to turn the corner toward retirement,” DeRosa said. “There are always business opportunities to help someone.”

Meantime, the state is trying to educate people about planning for long-term care. Since 1992, the Connecticut Partnership for Long-Term Care, an alliance of the state and private insurers, has offered special long-term care policies.

“This is a tremendous market,” said David Guttchen, director of the partnership. “The most motivating factor for someone to start looking at this is when they see a loved one go through it,” he said of the physical, emotional and financial toll long-term care issues can have.

Long-term care issues are also handled by elder law attorneys, another group expected to be in greater demand as people age.

The National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys Inc. says older individuals will comprise 20 percent of the U.S. population in 2030, creating what it calls a growing need for specialized legal advice about aging-related issues including estate and gift tax planning, among many others.

Connecticut opportunity

Fred Carstensen, professor of finance and economics at the University of Connecticut and director of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis, said it's important for the state to take advantage of the opportunities created by the growing senior population by marketing its cultural, natural and other attractions.

“From the state's point of view, we really need to be alert to how we can make the assets that we have in Connecticut, how we can improve the assets, how we can strengthen them and how we can market them to this very important growing demographic,” Carstensen said.

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Growing number of CT industries cater to older residents' needs

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