Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com July 27, 2015 • Hartford Business Journal 13 Stonemason finds new niche moving seniors By John Stearns jstearns@HartfordBusiness.com I t was by accident that Scott Walker fell into his mov- ing business helping seniors relocate. About six or seven years ago the longtime stone- mason contractor was low on work in a bad economy so he was looking for a way to utilize his trucks and keep his crew busy. A friend in an elder care placement company asked him if he could help move clients who had no family in the area. He said he would. "That's how it started," Walker, 50, said of what became Move Mom & More, based in Manchester. "We did one and I think that day that we moved somebody in, some woman asked me if I could help her move. I said, 'Yeah' — and it all started from there." Move Mom & More, officially launched in 2012, specializes in senior and elder-care transitioning, said Walker, the company's member and owner. "The idea was to help people transition from a larger home into either a smaller home or into assisted-living communities," Walker said. The business transition was timely with the econ- omy floundering, the senior population growing, Baby Boomers retiring and Walker's body feeling the effects of decades of "beatin' on rocks all day long." Business has been good, and Walker's looking to expand. He moves numerous people to the Carolinas and Florida, so he wants to set up Move Mom & More offices in those states and establish a network up and down the East Coast. After starting Move Mom & More, Walker last year also bought a traditional moving company, A&A Mov- ers, and Handle With Care Packaging Store, which specializes in packaging and shipping, including fur- niture and valuable artwork and antiques. The three businesses work well together, he said. Walker mostly markets his Move Mom & More through assisted-living facilities in New England, he said. He also taps his years of contracting experience — he still operates Innovative Stone and Water Works — and many contracting connections to provide handyman services to seniors or refer reliable contractors to them. "The problem is we all have our lives," he said. "I may not have all the time in the world to go take care of my mother's stuff," or someone may live many hours from their mom, he said. Part of the inspiration for wanting to offer handy- man services to seniors emerged from an incident with his mother, who, not wanting to bother her son, hired a contractor who took advantage of her, Walker said. "There are guys out there that may not all be up and up," Walker said. "Unfortunately, in our society, the senior population is an easy target for people to take advantage of. And I don't want that to happen with my company. So I make sure that the people I refer to them for any services are going to be quality, licensed people." He knows his referrals reflect on his company, too. n Scott Walker found a business opportunity helping Connecticut's aging seniors move into smaller homes or assisted-living facilities. H B J P H O T O | J O H N S T E A R N S H B J P H O T O | J O H N S T E A R N S strongly believe that food is energy. Food is also the cutting edge of medicine, and [people's] quality of life is fundamen- tally linked to what they're nourishing their bodies with." October Kitchen represents businesses giving seniors and their caregivers what they want. Seniors want the good, healthy meals minus the hassle of cooking, shopping and driving, while caregiv- ers want peace of mind that family members are eating well. Watching the Boomers Steven Lanza, assistant professor in the University of Connecticut Department of Economics and former execu- tive editor of The Connecticut Economy, said businesses are paying close attention to Baby Boomers, who are turning 65 at a rate of about 10,000 per day and who don't necessarily equate retirement with slowing down. "Businesses are watching that population and seeing what their needs are and adjusting to it," Lanza said. "It's a matter of looking around and seeing all the kinds of activities that people engage in and just thinking, 'OK, well, if we're going to keep doing these things as we get older, what kind of accom- modations and tweaks might have to get made to those prod- ucts or services with older consumers in mind?' " Chapter 126 Sports & Fitness in Bristol has tweaked the fit- ness model for gyms. Opened last fall as a program under Hart- ford nonprofit Oak Hill, the gym was built for people with physi- cal limitations, but a disability is not required to join. It attracts the able-bodied, including care- givers and seniors, said Leslie Sanchez, who oversees Chapter 126 as director of IT and new program development for Oak Hill. One couple that works out regularly is in their 90s, she said. Special equipment not found in typical gyms includes anti-gravity treadmills allow- ing users to take up to 80 percent of their body weight off their feet to reduce joint impact while exercising and machines that adjust to people in wheelchairs, Sanchez said. Importantly, Chapter 126 staffers are specially trained to work with people with disabilities, and the environment is unintimidating, she said. The gym also plans sports programs for older adults, including pickle ball, noodle hockey, and indoor bocce ball. It has partnered with AARP to offer members a dis- count and expects its senior population to grow, Sanchez said. Home safety, accessibility Brian A. Cosker Jr., working with his mother's durable medical equipment company, Ellsworth Medical LLC in Wind- sor, saw an opportunity to serve the elderly by making homes safer and more accessible. He created a separate company, Easy Accessibility Solutions by Ellsworth (EASE) that installs ramps, bathroom modifications and stair-lifts. He'd been doing modification projects for about 10 years under Ellsworth Medical LLC before launching EASE as a separate company in January. The National Association of Home Builders says the fast- est-growing segment of the residential remodeling industry is home modifications for aging-in-place. Most of Cosker's customers are 75-plus, he said. Cosker, a certified aging-in-place specialist — a designation from the builders group — creates a safe environment in seniors' homes to help them avoid trips and falls, bathe easier and safer, get up and down stairs via lift systems and more. EASE does in-home assessments evaluating a home's safe- ty environment and recommends alterations, if necessary. "Most of the time it's the bathroom," Cosker said of projects like replacing a tub with a barrier-free shower or creating a step-through tub, raising a toilet seat or adding grab bars. "There's a 100 percent need for what I do," said Cosker, noticing larger companies entering the field. "They're just validating what I've been doing for a long time." Homebuilder Johnny Carrier, vice president of By Carrier Inc. and chairman of the Home Builders & Remodelers Asso- ciation of Central Connecticut, said stagnant Connecticut home values have dampened the market for building 55-and- up communities. People need to be able to sell their existing home first, before they buy new, he said, noting that building a new home is somewhat of a luxury. Carrier has one 55-and-over community under construction and largely sold and built out, the 88-home Castle Heights devel- opment in Cheshire, and completed two others in Farmington in the last three years. He'd consider doing another community, but it would have to be the right deal in the right town. Caregivers and aging in home With seniors preferring to age in their homes, homecare businesses are among those standing to benefit, said Nora Duncan, AARP Connecticut state director. About 711,000 people in Connecticut are providing care for a loved one in any one year, Duncan said. Apps that family caregivers can use to manage care of a loved one from a distance would be helpful, Duncan said. One tool could be AARP's RealPad, an easy-to-use Wi-Fi tablet geared toward people who aren't necessarily tech-savvy. Financial planning As people live longer, they also need their money to last. With Connecticut's growing aging population, Jenny DeR- osa Bergeron, financial adviser at Edward Jones in Marlbor- ough, said the company is focusing more on creating income and financial plans that last longer into retirement. "Many of us in the industry are offering seminars on topics like Social Security strategies or health care in retirement in addition to reaching out to folks that weren't interested in meeting with a financial adviser before they started to turn the corner toward retirement," DeRosa said. "There are always business opportunities to help someone." Meantime, the state is trying to educate people about plan- ning for long-term care. Since 1992, the Connecticut Partner- ship for Long-Term Care, an alliance of the state and private insurers, has offered special long-term care policies. "This is a tremendous market," said David Guttchen, direc- tor of the partnership. "The most motivating factor for some- one to start looking at this is when they see a loved one go through it," he said of the physical, emotional and financial toll long-term care issues can have. Long-term care issues are also handled by elder law attorneys, another group expected to be in greater demand as people age. The National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys Inc. says older individuals will comprise 20 percent of the U.S. population in 2030, creating what it calls a growing need for specialized legal advice about aging-related issues including estate and gift tax planning, among many others. Connecticut opportunity Fred Carstensen, professor of finance and economics at the University of Connecticut and director of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis, said it's important for the state to take advantage of the opportunities created by the growing senior pop- ulation by marketing its cultural, natural and other attractions. "From the state's point of view, we really need to be alert to how we can make the assets that we have in Connecticut, how we can improve the assets, how we can strengthen them and how we can market them to this very important growing demographic," Carstensen said. n Nora Duncan, Connecticut state director, AARP Paul Finney's October Kitchen currently preps and delivers healthy foods, like asparagus, to about 200 customers, two-thirds of whom are seniors.

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