Piper Trail is open­ing the doors to its new mod­el home with an Open House on Jan­u­ary 28

January 28, 2020

Eight months after break­ing ground, and with 27 of its planned 48 cot­tage-style homes already reserved, Piper Trail will throw open the doors of its new­ly com­plet­ed mod­el home at an Open House cel­e­bra­tion on Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 28 from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.

The event is open to the pub­lic and will take place at Piper Trail, 8151 Glen­car­in Boule­vard in Fort Wayne. And begin­ning Feb­ru­ary 4, the mod­el home will be open every Tues­day from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Piper Trail is a Luther­an Life Vil­lages com­mu­ni­ty, a lead­ing not-for-prof­it provider of senior liv­ing and care ser­vices in north­east Indi­ana, and it rep­re­sents a new direc­tion for the orga­ni­za­tion, whose roots in the Fort Wayne area go back to 1931. 

“The pock­et neigh­bor­hood devel­op­ment will meet the needs of a new gen­er­a­tion of active adults ages 55 and old­er”, says Alex Kiefer, Luther­an Life Vil­lages pres­i­dent and CEO. 

“Many of today’s old­er adults are down­siz­ing from larg­er homes. And a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of them are look­ing for alter­na­tives to tra­di­tion­al senior liv­ing com­mu­ni­ties,” he explains. ​“They’re look­ing to sim­pli­fy. But they also want a lifestyle com­pa­ra­ble to what they have now: their own home in a real neighborhood.” 

With its inno­v­a­tive design ­– based on the ​“pock­et neigh­bor­hood” con­cept of Wash­ing­ton state-based archi­tect Ross Chapin – Piper Trail will deliv­er both, says Kiefer. Sit­u­at­ed on 12 acres in Inver­ness Cen­tre in south­west Fort Wayne, the neigh­bor­hood of small-foot­print homes clus­tered around green spaces is designed to fos­ter a clos­er sense of com­mu­ni­ty than tra­di­tion­al neigh­bor­hoods and pro­vide neigh­bors more oppor­tu­ni­ties to inter­act and social­ize every day. 

“It’s sim­i­lar to the kind of small town you might have seen 70 years ago in the Unit­ed States,” says Piper Trail archi­tect Dodd Kattman, a prin­ci­pal at MKM archi­tec­ture + design in Fort Wayne. ​“It’s a very spe­cial kind of place that enhances the well-being of the peo­ple who live there.”

With nine floor plans, rang­ing from 1,140 sq. ft. to 1,676 sq. ft. Piper Trail homes are com­pact but designed inten­tion­al­ly in a way that cre­ates spa­cious­ness. Each cot­tage fea­tures an open floor plan, nat­ur­al light, attached two-car garage, and some­thing Kattman says is sad­ly miss­ing from many of today’s homes – an invit­ing front porch where neigh­bors can chat.