Chloe Wright, Editor-in-Chief
A wooded site tucked between Kennerly Road and Alabama Avenue is where Arcadia at Sewanee’s board hopes to build a luxury senior living facility on the Domain. The rolling woodland neighbors the University’s new faculty staff apartment site as well as Sewanee’s historically Black St. Mark’s community.
A plan for a continuing care retirement center has been floating around since the early 2010s, but there has been little progress beyond repeated paid consultants, surveys and bids to convince a developer to take on the project. After years of rejection and setbacks, Arcadia’s board members say they are still optimistic.
Arcadia board President George Elliott (C ‘81), a Birmingham commercial real estate executive, says the independent nonprofit will serve the community. For students, he and other board members say, Arcadia will offer mentorship and career opportunities. Board member Frank Gladu, a retired University vice president for administrative services, said Arcadia’s board has discussed with the School of Theology for ministering opportunities for seminarians. “The Episcopal Church is very interested in the aging population and how they are going to minister to that population. Well, here’s a laboratory right here on campus.”
To launch the project and begin construction, board members say they will need to raise $20 million.
Yet some faculty and Sewanee residents have concerns about the project’s viability and its impact on the University, its students and the wider community. They cite Sewanee’s distance from healthcare facilities and physicians that developers and experts alike say are crucial for such retirement facilities. They also worry about Arcadia project’s environmental impact; its affordability; its ability to recruit adequate staffing in a rural area; and the potential competition with the University’s fundraising.
Kennerly Road residents Margaret Barton (C ‘78) and Christopher Barton are among those increasingly vocal about Arcadia and its site choice. Originally, the Bartons say, they were supportive of having a retirement community on campus. But they are now concerned about the logistics and direct impact of such a large project on the tree-lined backstreets east of Sewanee’s village and south of central campus.
Representatives of Arcadia’s 10-member board say they hope to begin building approximately 130 independent and assisted living units and 12 memory care units by 2029 on 12 ½ acres between Kennerly Road and Alabama Avenue. The project’s estimated cost has increased, from $97 million in May 2025 to $121 million in October 2025.
Christopher Barton says the projected cost spike indicates that the board has not considered the infrastructure costs enough. A former President of the Monteagle-Sewanee Rotary Club, he and his wife chose to retire at Sewanee after working for over 40 years in government and politics in Washington D.C. “I come at this from someone who was a Congressional authorizer, doing assessments of multibillion dollar appropriations bills,” he said. “And their numbers don’t make sense.”
Arcadia has struggled to find investors and developers willing to work in such a rural area for years. The Bartons and other critics contend that’s evidence that the project is impractical for Sewanee.
“It sounds like a good idea,” said Margaret Barton, a former University Regent and Trustee. “And in concept, we were supportive. But now it just doesn’t seem realistic…It’s because we don’t think it’s the best for the University. We don’t think it will have the best outcome. We don’t think it will advance the (University’s) strategic plan.”
Beginnings of Arcadia
The idea for a senior living facility at Sewanee gained traction in 2013, after some alumni began lobbying for such a development for Sewanee’s retirees. In October 2013, University Trustees passed a resolution to explore a retirement community on the Domain. The University funded initial market surveys. After an independent Arcadia board was created and achieved nonprofit status separate from the University in 2015, its board began working with marketing consultants and seeking a developer to fund, build and run the project.
Arcadia’s ten-member board includes prominent alumni and retired University officials. Former President Linda Lankewicz is a retired University provost and founding member of Arcadia. Jim Dixon (C ‘94) is the treasurer and owns the construction company building the University’s faculty-staff apartments. Pete Stringer (C ’71), a retired Nashville banker and Regent, and former Vice-Chancellor, Joel Cunningham, are also on the board.
Margaret Barton, a former Arcadia board president, left the board because she was disappointed by the lack of progress. “I don’t see the money being realistic,” she said. “I don’t see a vision that is able to be executed…. And frankly, that’s why I’m not on the board anymore. I just felt like we were spinning our wheels for years and talking about what we wanted to do, but nothing was being done.”
Other board members have acknowledged the difficulty of recruiting developers. After two promising developers backed out, one then-board-member, a retired physician, told a May 2018 community meeting covered by the Sewanee Mountain Messenger: “We thought we had some developers who were really interested, then it kind of slacks off.” The Messenger’s article added that then-Arcadia-board president Linda Lankewicz said convincing developers that building the project could be profitable was not the only challenge. “Then there is another ongoing long-term profit from operating and they want to see numbers that are lucrative,” she was quoted as saying. ”These big organizations are looking for something that fits their model. Their model isn’t necessarily what Sewanee wants.”
In 2021, the Messenger reported that University Vice President for Economic Development David Shipps responded with questions when asked about Arcadia at a Rotary Club presentation. “How is that in the best interest of the University and a priority over everything else? How does that help me attract 475 students every August? At the moment, that’s vague to me.” Shipps declined an interview request from The Purple.
There are indications that the University remains open to considering the project. Gladu told the Purple that when the Arcadia board originally approached the Board of Trustees, they were supportive. “I mean, they’re very community-centered, and they understand what this would mean to Sewanee if we were able to create something like this,” he said. “We’re hoping to, at some point, to, with the University, have some particularly favorable land arrangements on the front end to allow this project to get off the ground.”
In a recent interview with The Purple, Vice-Chancellor Rob Pearigen said he was pleased with the Arcadia’s board’s progress. When asked about the group’s multi-million-dollar fundraising goal, he said there could be potential for a joint capital campaign.
“The current model would require some portion of the cost of it to be from private funding, private gifts. And so, what we will have to determine is, is that sort of something that they do separate from the University,” he said. ”Would we want this to be part of what people are giving to in order to enhance the Sewanee experience? And I think again, there’s been a lot of interest through the years in having something like this, and there would be some real benefits to the University if we had that kind of facility. So, it wouldn’t exactly be the University fundraising campaign, but they would certainly be drawing on people who would also potentially be interested in supporting the University. And you could see how gifts to something like that might be seen as tantamount to support for not just the University, but the Sewanee community. ”
Margaret Barton said she understands Sewanee’s appeal as a retirement community. “Sewanee is kind of viewed as an Arcadia. To those grads, especially older grads, and the further away you get, the more wonderful the memories are. And why everybody likes to live here. It’s the quality of life, it’s a lifestyle, it’s the community, it’s the friendships, it’s the support.”
But she and others say there is a gap between idyllic concepts and realities of a rural area.
Alabama Avenue resident Becca Peek Arnold (C ’98) voices alarm about such a large construction project in her neighborhood. A former employee of the University’s admissions office, Arnold also questions whether the project can advance Sewanee’s educational mission and student experience. Students want “access to professors, a college that’s investing in them, making possibilities within their student life,” she said. “What the University has on the central campus has to be planned properly and student-centered.”
Healthcare a Concern
The Sewanee area’s lack of healthcare has been a concern for critics of Arcadia and University officials alike. Franklin County’s uninsured population is above the national average, according to a report in U.S. News & World Report. Sewanee’s campus hospital has a small number of hospital beds and long-term care beds but functions largely as an emergency room. Residents must travel down the Mountain for most medical care.
Elliott says that the nonprofit has met with the Sewanee hospital’s parent institution in Winchester and plans to have a van drive residents periodically to medical appointments in Chattanooga and Nashville. Elliott and others say Arcadia is supported by Blakeford Senior Life, which runs a Nashville nonprofit senior living facility. In 2022, Blakeford began offering concierge healthcare support for a fee so Sewanee area residents could age-in-place. Arcadia also plans to collaborate with Folks at Home, a local nonprofit that since 2013 has offered support such as grocery pickup, social events and lawn care for a monthly fee.
“We know it’s a challenge, and people are not going to buy into this if they aren’t going to have adequate healthcare,” Gladu said. “There are opportunities for people to receive these services, but it might take more effort to try to get them to it. I mean, this is not in the middle of Nashville where there’s, you know, significant hospitals with fully staffed doctors.”
Board secretary John Solomon (C ’70), a retired banker and Sewanee resident, said he believes Arcadia’s size would attract healthcare professionals. “If we built this facility and had it fully occupied, or well-occupied, it would be a lot of potential patients for them.”
Affordability for University Retirees
Arcadia’s projected price tag for residents has also raised eyebrows. Arcadia officials have recently said that the facility’s cost for residents is expected to range from $386,000 to $857,000 in 2029 dollars. Faculty who attended an Arcadia presentation during last fall’s homecoming weekend were told there are currently no planned discounts for University retirees.
English Professor Kelly Malone, chair of the faculty’s coordinating committee, said she has noticed that Arcadia has done impact studies, and the surrounding community distrusts them. “It just kind of confirmed my sense that there are a lot of issues that everybody’s who’s invested in this project aren’t seeing because they do not wish to see them.”
Working at Sewanee since 2002, Malone said, she’s seen that healthcare access has “always been a challenge.” She also questions Arcadia’s affordability. “Long ago, Arcadia was envisioned as a place where people could essentially move from their position at the university,” she said.” I think that’s off the table.”
“The buy-in amount that was mentioned is pretty much the equivalent of my entire retirement account, so I don’t see that this is going to be an affordable option for most of the people who work here,” she said. “Unless you’re sort of an extremely well-compensated individual or have another source of funds.”
Elliott acknowledged affordability for University employees is a concern. “But being able to afford to build and operate is also a concern,” he said. “We want the project to be reflective of the demographic of Sewanee…But we can’t make it all affordable. There has to be some that’s more expensive.”
In May 2025, the Messenger reported that Elliott told a community council meeting that Arcadia hoped to draw from Sewanee alumni and others in Chattanooga, Atlanta and Nashville.
Solomon told The Purple that local demographics necessitated that. “We would expect 50 percent of the residents to come from the primary market, and so pricing will reflect that, and then 25 percent from the secondary market, primarily Nashville, then 25 percent from our state, Tennessee, and the surrounding states. So we have to be competitive,” he said. “We haven’t totally figured out how to do it from a financial perspective, but it is very much at the forefront of what we intend to do.”
Faculty Voice Concerns
Arcadia has prompted discussions at recent faculty meetings. On Feb. 17, Shipps was asked to give the faculty an update. He began by saying the University is not “directly involved other than being aware and listening.” He added that he attends Arcadia board meetings to relay questions to the University. “I would characterize their stage as being very, very early,” he said. “But nonetheless, they’re- they’re working at determining what is possible.”
There were questions about what the University would charge Arcadia for leasing Domain property – an issue that one professor noted was of particular interest amid concern about the University’s budget.
When Shipps said Arcadia does not have a plan for what they want to build, a professor responded: “So you’ve just indicated that they don’t have a plan. Do we have any idea of when they might or at what point we will intervene, or they will have to interact with the lease committee? Do we have any timeline on that? Or what point does University get a say? Or we get a say?”
“They are determining what it is that they might build and whether or not that will wholly work financially,” Shipps said, “And then they have to figure out all the funding associated with that.”
Another professor noted Sewanee’s lack of healthcare. Shipps responded: “I have the same questions…I’ve been here nine years, so I haven’t been here the whole time that Arcadia has been a topic. But my sense is that it has been a topic for the amount of time it has been a topic because that healthcare question has been unanswered.”
Shipps also noted the need for additional evaluations. “They still have studies to do. They have traffic studies to do. They have water studies to do – watershed studies to do, environmental impact studies to do – all of which, for example, we did with the apartments.”
Environmental Questions
Some critics say more studies and real community input are needed. Rhetoric Professor Melody Lehn, who lives near Arcadia’s proposed site, wonders whether there will be actual community engagement before the project goes forward. “We can have as many town halls or community meetings as we want. But at the end of the day the question always remains: who actually gets to decide what this project looks like, where it goes and how it happens?”
Others fear that Arcadia poses an environmental danger. The Arcadia site encroaches on a tributary of the protected Lost Cove watershed. In January, a Huntsville civil engineering firm retained by Arcadia conducted soil tests to determine the site’s suitability for construction.
Forestry professor Scott Torreano says he is more concerned with modeling and measuring storm water runoff. “Soil characteristics are just a rough indicator of watershed condition and response,” he said. ”A model (estimate) of post-construction stormwater volume and flow path would need to be made, especially in the landscape under consideration.”
Sewanee Utilities General Manager Ben Beavers told The Purple he knows little about the project, which would rely on the utility’s water and sewerage infrastructure. Asked whether the Arcadia board has reached out to his department, Beavers said that Gladu advised, “they were going to be doing some geotechnical survey or something which really didn’t have anything to do with us. So, I don’t even know why he called, honestly, but, yeah, nothing official.”
Beavers said more discussion and study will be needed to determine whether the utility district can handle the project. “Because even if they can get it to our sewer plan,” he said, “if we don’t have the capacity, then, you know, it’s sort of a moot point.”
Those who live near the proposed Arcadia site, which includes a TVA power-line easement and the University’s ropes course, have doubts about its suitability. “I’ve lived here since 2011, tromped through those woods, it’s a swamp,” said Arnold, whose home lies beside the proposed Arcadia site. “It’s a marsh. There’s a reason why nothing is currently built there.”
Professor Elyzabeth Wilder says Arcadia’s maps include plans to cut through her Kennerly Road property. “The road to Arcadia is literally going to be paved through my yard.”
“But as a member of this community, I’m also concerned about the environmental impact, the increase in traffic and population density, the strain on local infrastructure, and the exclusionary nature of building a development that is not financially accessible to the majority of faculty and staff who wish to age here,” she said. “When you look at the long term impact, it feels like these developers are simultaneously destroying the community they are trying to sell.”
Some neighborhood residents say the development could harm the historically Black and underserved St. Mark’s community’s dwindling minority population. St. Mark’s Board Member Carl Hill told The Purple that he has heard such fears from long-time residents and newer residents who moved in because “it wasn’t a whole bunch of construction and modernizing. It was just, you know, a walk-in community where you can actually walk down the road.”
Hill doesn’t necessarily see the project as a threat. “You can’t keep anything old-timey, so there’s not really any older, older structures in the Black community,” he said. “I’ve been led to believe, during my growing up, that that section had been donated and aired for the historical land of the community itself, designated in the name of Willie Six and to stay preserved to the ones who lived there before.”
But he added: “There are a lot of acreages that can be developed instead of turned down, and the St. Mark’s community might not be good for [Arcadia].”
Hill was among Kennerly, Alabama, Willie Six and St. Mark’s residents who sent a letter to the Vice Chancellor last July asking him to reject the proposed site. That letter noted that homes in St. Mark’s weren’t supplied with water and sewer lines until 1983, adding: “The irony that a luxury retirement village is now targeting a location within the Hollow in order to take advantage of the existing power, water, and sewer lines has not escaped notice.
Arnold, who also signed the letter, said her focus as a Sewanee’s admissions staffer was attracting a more diverse student population. “I can’t help with my profession but think about it in a bigger picture,” she said. “Without a strong core of an existing community, it was impossible to, in a meaningful way, to increase admissions.”
Outside the Sewanee Bubble
Building senior living facilities alongside colleges and universities isn’t new. A number of Sewanee’s peer institutions have such projects on or near their campuses, including Washington & Lee and Furman. Berry College supported development of a $138 million continuing care project featuring 170 independent living residences. Berry College’s nursing and physician’s assistant programs provide student interns and other support, and the nearest hospital is less than 2 miles away.
The Purple spoke with Andrew Carle, a national expert on university-based, comprehensive senior living communities. His website, University Retirement Communities, has been an industry leader. In a 2015 interview with Financial Advisor, Carle said he has had to tell small, remote schools, “There’s just not a senior living market there.”
Carle said the most important factors contributing to a college-based senior living facility are its proximity to campus and to a wide range of healthcare facilities, its business relationship with the institution, and a retired faculty and staff population to “bring the culture into the community.”
In Sewanee’s case, he told The Purple, having adequate continuing health care resources is a priority. “If there’s not a nursing home in Sewanee,” he said, “then they need to think about how they’re going to offer that or who’s going to tell that loyal alum, who was the first one to move in and put down a deposit to be in there, that their last memory of their alma mater is that they had to leave because their spouse needed skilled nursing.”