Entertainment giant The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) has offered an early glimpse into the forthcoming Storyliving by Disney concept.
The model, which Disney announced in February, is a master-planned community with a variety of neighborhoods, including some for residents age 55 or older. The first Storyliving community — Cotino — is coming together in Rancho Mirage, California, with unit sales expected to start in 2023 and initial move-ins in the following year.
Disney this week previewed four home design concepts that will serve as inspiration for the community. Scottsdale, Arizona-based DMB Development and architectural design firm WHA collaborated on the designs with input and creative insight from Walt Disney Imagineering.
Although the conceptual renderings “are not intended to be actual homes” in the final design, they do represent the direction the company is headed, a representative for the entertainment company wrote in a recent Disney Parks blog post.
The city of Rancho Mirage will review the renderings — which are part of a Preliminary Development Plan — prior to the start of building, according to the post.
The renderings are meant to be “inspiration of the types of homes and designs that builders will offer in the Cotino community,” the post reads. They depict four modern-looking dwellings in a variety of designs, each in a different style and layout.
The company also has released preliminary designs for the community’s amenity spaces on its Storyliving website. The renderings, which also are subject to change in the final product, show vibrant indoor and outdoor spaces with crowds of people, shops, a beachfront area and other amenities in use.
Early plans for Storyliving call for condominiums, single-family homes and other types of housing, with at least one section reserved for senior housing. Planned amenities include a roughly 24-acre “grand oasis” with lagoons and a waterfront clubhouse, private beach area and Disney programming, entertainment and activities.
Residents also can opt in to a club membership that offers access to a waterfront clubhouse, a club-only beach area and recreational water activities, and Disney entertainment and activities available at an additional fee.
“The very heart of any Storyliving by Disney community rests in Disney’s vision of vibrant settings and magical possibilities,” the Disney Parks blog post reads. “Imagination and inspiration have been carefully infused into every detail to provide invigorating and rejuvenating environments and activities.”
The community is set in the surrounding Palm Springs landscape, which Disney called a “living painting” given its natural beauty and abundant colors.
Disney is not the only entertainment company with plans to grow in the senior housing space. Minto Communities, for example, is expanding its Latitude Margaritaville brand in the Southeast, such as in Texas, amid robust demand for the product type.
And these plans come amid an increasingly competitive — even chaotic — active adult housing market, with many real estate developers, investors and managers pursuing the massive baby boomer demographic. Furthermore, many aspects of the Storyliving concept — including intergenerational living in a mixed-use environment — reflect broader trends in senior living.