NEWTON — The first holiday season at Opus Newton, this city’s newest senior housing development, is all about community.
Musician and singer Jim Ball started the building’s chorus, with plans for events featuring Christmas carols and Hanukkah celebration songs. Ron Goldman, a trained psychotherapist with a passion for acting, launched the theater program. Judy Kaplan organized an impromptu Thanksgiving potluck. Dozens came.
Ball, Goldman, and Kaplan — who are in their late 70s to early 80s — are residents at the 172-unit senior apartment development on a Newton hillside that was, not so long ago, just a parking lot. Opus Newton broke ground on the site, next door the Jewish Community Center of Greater Boston and the Coleman House, in 2022 and opened its doors to residents earlier this year. So far, 189 residents of an expected 230 have moved in.
Opus is specifically targeted for middle-income seniors, a rapidly growing segment of the population but one that is routinely shut out of a senior care market that’s increasingly bifurcated between housing available for those making below the area median income and higher-income earners. A 2022 study by the NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan think tank, found that there will be at least 16 million middle-income seniors by 2033 — many of whom will struggle to pay for health care and housing as they age.
“When you age in community, you live longer, you live healthier, you live happier — that’s absolutely, unquestionably true,” said Amy Schectman, CEO of 2Life Communities, which developed Opus Newton. “It can’t be excluded from anyone because they’re not wealthy enough.”
Ball said he and his wife had moved from a single-family home in Newton to a condo in Brookline, where they enjoyed easy access to the MBTA Green Line and a walkable neighborhood. But eventually, hauling groceries up three sets of stairs got to be too much.
“I have friends who are in the more expensive (senior housing developments), and there’s no way we could have afforded them,” Ball said. “We have enough money that we’re not going to be in subsidized housing. So this was the only alternative that really made some sense to us.”
Kaplan likes Opus Newton’s requirement that its residents volunteer at the property — it’s appealing for a person looking for active community, she said.
For many older people who are now living alone after years of living with family, loneliness can prove difficult. A 2018 study from the Gerontology Institute of the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston found that for more than a quarter of Massachusetts residents, depression accompanied old age.
In the fall, after realizing many of her neighbors had no travel plans for the Thanksgiving holiday, Kaplan arranged a potluck meal. The group is planning a Christmas meal as well.
“For a lot of old people ... being alone on a holiday is deadly. It shouldn’t have to be,” Kaplan said. “Nobody should be alone unless they choose to be alone.”
On a recent weekday, a “Cozy Traditions Week” calendar posted in the elevators outlined plans for a cookie swap, a ceremonial Menorah lighting, and a double feature of “It’s A Wonderful Life” and “Miracle on 34th Street,” along with a Hanukkah party and latke tasting event.
Rather than generic mass-market prints like you’d see in a hotel, Opus Newton’s hallways are lined with art donated from the former homes of its residents — oftentimes, paintings are placed near their donors’ front doors. Art therapy, music therapy, dance therapy are standard practice for anyone with memory loss. The property has an outdoor courtyard with raised garden beds, so residents who had gardened at home can do so at Opus.
Each resident can receive a physical fitness assessment, and will have a chip card that automatically loads a prescribed workout — that way, residents don’t have to scramble to remember the number of repetitions or sets in their workout regimen.
Opus’s 172 units have 12 different layouts, and 60 percent of the units have outdoor balconies. The building is designed to be fully adaptable to a range of senior-care needs — the bathrooms have space wide enough for a wheelchair to turn, and walk-in showers rather than bathtubs that require a high step up and in.
“When we walked in and saw the size of the bathrooms, we said, ‘Holy cow!’” Ball said.
The Opus financial model requires a relatively high upfront down payment — between $450,000 and $1.2 million — but keeps monthly fees low — between $2,500 to $5,000. For many older, middle-income adults in Greater Boston, the value of homes they’d purchased in the 1960s or 1970s has increased dramatically, and, for many, the equity from selling that home could fund the upfront payment to Opus. The upfront payments will be used to pay down Opus’s $100 million construction loan. The project was financed via tax-exempt bonds from MassDevelopment purchased by Hamlin Capital Advisors of Tampa.
Upon residents’ passing, their estates will get back 80 percent of their upfront payment — a refund that will come out of the proceeds from reselling their apartment. It’s a unique financial model that Hamlin didn’t initially understand. But it’s one that’s important to the ongoing economic stability of middle-income seniors, Schectman said.
A monthly fee covers a broad range of services, from health care navigation and meals to the fitness assessment and myriad classes and programs.
Recently, at sunset on the second day of Hanukkah, around two dozen Opus Newton residents gathered around a rabbinic intern — one who’d just led a discussion on the Torah — to light a second menorah candle. Many knew the Hebrew prayers by heart; others read along with a pronunciation guide and English translations. The prior night, Schectman said, more than 100 people gathered.
“By giving them the tools to age optimally, people will contribute to a larger community,” Schectman said.
Catherine Carlock can be reached at catherine.carlock@globe.com. Follow her @bycathcarlock.