AVI STEINHARDT/Courier-Post Moorestown Estates resident Alice Woodford (left) and fellow residents toss a ball around during an exercise session recently at the assisted living facility.

by MIKE DANIELS
Courier-Post Staff

Thomas and Regina McGann have lived together in Moorestown since they married 68 years ago.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, they migrated to Florida in the winters. But for the last 15 years, Moorestown's been their year-round home.

With more than 40 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, most of whom live in Moorestown, the McGann's are happy to be living in the Brandywine Assisted Living at Moorestown Estates.

``There aren't too many towns like Moorestown. It's a beautiful place . . . It's a great place to live,'' Thomas McGann said.

While school construction and rising enrollment has been easy to spot in the township, growing relatively quietly has been the senior housing stock.

Even though from census to census the number of seniors ages 65 and older in the township have not kept pace with the surge in other township age ranges, senior living has had a noticeable affect as the growth in new senior housing claims the dwindling amount of open space in the community.

The township's senior living centers, the Evergreens on Bridgeboro Road among them, saw the beginnings of a large build-out in the 1990s. And in this decade, a new center opened last year and two more are in the planning.

Between 1990 and 2000, the census data shows that it was those groups that saw the biggest increases in numbers and the share they comprise of the township's total population.

The growth of Moorestown's school-age population has been evident for some time. Just this month, a new 950-student school for township fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders opened on Borton Landing Road.

In 1994, The Evergreens, a 100-bed nursing home that opened in 1949, built 200 more assisted living apartments for senior singles and couples. They have been completely full with a long waiting list since 1996 marketing director Marge Cain said.

In July 2000, the 137-bed Brandywine facility on North Church Street opened. The facility is already at about 85 percent capacity and will likely be full before the end of the year said Cori Laphan, community relations director for the Moorestown Estates.

In the planning are two more assisted living facilities a 76-bed building at Westfield and Garwood Roads and a 120-bed building on Meadow Drive just off Route 38. Toll Brothers developers also have plans to build more than 150, age restricted homes along Centerton Road. However, those plans have not yet been approved by the township.

These facilities are a big reason for the increase in seniors in the township.

Between 1990 and 2000, Moorestown's population rose from 16,116 to 19,017, according to the census.

While During that period, the number of males in the township rose by about 1,300, while the number of females rose by about 1,600. The data shows that there were more men than women in the town in 1990 but that there are far more women now.

Mayor Howard Miller was only surprised to learn that there were not more women in the town in 1990.

``It (the rise in women) may be a little surprising, what may be more surprising are the 1990 statistics.''

Cain said that of couples, single men or single women, that ``Single women, by far'' constitute the largest segment of people at The Evergreens.

Laphan said the case is similar at Brandywine, where single, widowed women, also outnumber men and couples.

Alice Woodford is typical of many of the women who have moved into Brandywine since it opened last summer.

Woodford, 95, a widow, traded in her car and a big home in Riverton last summer for a Brandywine apartment.

``I love it here. I don't know where I'd have it any better,'' Woodford said.

At Brandywine, the staff cleans her apartment, does her laundry and cooks her meals. And she can take the hop in the facility's bus or limousine any time she wants to go shopping, to the doctor's office, to a play or anywhere else, she said.

Woodford said most of the people she has met at Brandywine are not from Moorestown, but they love living here now.

Woodford's age group, 75 and over, was among the groups posting the largest percentage of growth in the township from 1990 to 2000, according the U.S. Census Bureau.

Between 1990 and 2000, the percent of the township's total population made up of people between 45 and 59 went from 18.9 percent (3,041) to 21.9 percent (4,160). Likewise, the percentage of the population that was 75 and older went from 7.5 percent (1,224) to 9 percent (1,717).However, the percentage of the population between 60 and 74 went down from 15 percent (2,408) to 11.8 percent (2,242).

The reason for those discrepancies may be what people are doing between the time they retire and the end of their lives.

Cain said people go through stages of retirement. When they first retire, she said, people in their '50s or '60s may move south for several years to fish, golf and enjoy the warm weather.

``They moved to Florida, Georgia or the Carolinas when they first retired,'' Cain said. ``Then as the years go by they realize what their priorities are. They want to be around people they know, their family. They want to be in a community they're familiar with.''

``It's usually in their mid to late '70s when you see people moving back,'' Cain added.

``We just had a couple move in from Arizona,'' said Laphan.

``They had lived in the Moorestown area before and moved back to be closer to their family.''

Coupled with those seniors moving back to the area, are some who never left.

Cain said of all the towns The Evergreens draws from, there are more Moorestown natives here than from any other community.