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3. Ross Cortese’s “Leisure World” Concept
- University Press of Florida
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82 Ross Cortese’s “Leisure World” Concept At the start of the 1960s, an employee in FHA’s cooperative housing program rushed into his boss’s office to inform him that “some lunatics on the West Coast were thinking of using our program to isolate thousands of senior citizens by actually walling them up in a slum in Seal Beach.”1 That was an unflattering reference to Ross Cortese’s pioneering efforts with relatively compact, gated communities. When Cortese opened his first Leisure World the year after Webb opened Sun City, Cortese said his concept was “to supply the basic needs of life for people aged 52 or older, create a serene atmosphere of beauty, provide security, recreation and religious facilities . . . then leave the living to the individual.”2 Cortese was an innovator, not just an imitator of Del Webb. Certainly the two had a lot in common. They were aware of and somewhat influenced by each other. However, Cortese seems to have arrived at his concept of the ideal age-restricted, active adult community on his own. How did he do it? In California, home of the first two Leisure Worlds, Cortese became better known than Del Webb. And unlike Webb in the 1960s, Cortese built retirement communities on the East Coast. While his Leisure Worlds reinforced the “active retirement” image that Webb was promoting, Cortese spotted some of Webb’s mistakes and avoided them. Just who was Ross Cortese? What innovations did he bring to city planning in general and to retirement communities in particular? Finally, what were Cortese’s specific contributions to changing attitudes toward and images of the elderly? Ross Cortese’s Background Cortese was a much more private individual than Del Webb. Cortese shunned the limelight and rarely gave interviews. He did not function 3 Ross Cortese’s “Leisure World” Concept | 83 to the degree that Del Webb did as a public spokesman and promoter of his communities, nor did he succeed in turning his personal name or the name of his company, Rossmoor, into a brand like Webb did, although the name Leisure World does function as a brand name somewhat like Sun City. Because of the kind of person he was, not as much is publicly known about Ross Cortese compared to Del Webb. No book-length biographies exist about him. Thus, it is harder to tell his story with much detail. In the twentieth century, a college degree became almost mandatory for success, but neither Webb nor Cortese even graduated from high school. Cortese was a generation younger than Webb. Instead of his parents and grandparents having a prominent place in the community, Ross Cortese was the son of an Italian immigrant, Salvador Cortese, and his wife, Frances.3 He was born on 19 November 1916 in East Palestine, Ohio. His family, which included three sisters and a brother, moved to Glendale, California, near Los Angeles, where Ross’s father had a push cart from which he peddled fruits and vegetables.4 During the Great Depression, it was a real struggle to just subsist. To help the family make ends meet, Ross dropped out of Glendale’s Hoover High School in his sophomore year to peddle fruits and vegetables. He was seventeen. A Glendale school official recalled how Ross went door to door with his small truck.5 Years later as a very successful builder, Cortese admitted to being “kind of embarrassed” by his lack of formal education. He explained to a Los Angeles Times reporter, “I’m afraid that I won’t say quite the right thing in the way I want to say it.” One result of this embarrassment over his lack of educational credentials was his practice of distancing himself from outsiders.6 His daughter Heidi Cortese described him while he was a teenager as “the breadwinner of the family.” She recalled his generosity. At one point, instead of spending some of his meager earnings on himself, he bought dolls for his sisters. As she expressed it, her father “had a heart the size of the universe; [he] was the most tender hearted person I ever knew.” Apparently, he retained that sense of personal generosity as a successful builder. Heidi Cortese told how people would come up to her and “explain that when they were late on a [house] payment, mysteriously it was made for them. Or when a dog would die, a new puppy would anonymously appear.” Her father had known real poverty growing up and, in Heidi...