When my husband and I were beginning to take retirement seriously, we discovered the oddest sensation -- FREEDOM.

Always, we had gone to live where the work was and just accomodated whatever there was about the place we didn't like.  We took the house style we could afford, compromise locations, and just lived with whatever that meant. 

There were two things we insisted on though.  The best schools for our kids and an easy walk to a synagogue.  But those things are just about everywhere in the USA.  

Now we had to just decide where to live, and we could actually go live in retirement anywhere we wanted.  

But where would that be?  We had traveled the USA going to various Science Fiction and Fantasy conventions (since I'm a professional writer).  But where would we go for retirement?  We were like the caged animal looking at the open door and not leaving the cage.  Confused.  

I hit the internet and searched for established communities that would fit our requirements. 

So for ten years we traveled from Seattle to Boca Raton and from Cape Cod to San Diego searching.  We looked at hundreds of houses for sale and tried to picture retirement in such a place.  We eliminated all but five locations, then eliminated all of them.  

Bottom line, we didn't want to move.  But then the dot.com bubble burst and 9/11 slammed into our world and we realized we couldn't afford to stay in our New York home.  

So I hit the internet again, this time knowing we were leaving New York and needing to find a place to move to.  One last time, one last move.  It had to be just right.

And I found a new community that hadn't been in operation when we visited the Phoenix AZ area a few years before.  It has houses with sidewalks in front of them, neat yards, nice wide streets with no potholes.  

Our house sold the first day we had it on the market.  And I discovered a friend of mine had just moved to Chandler, AZ.  She put me up when I came to Chandler househunting.  I connected with the local Chabad Rabbi (Rabbi Deitsch) of Chabad of the East Valley, who connected us with a real estate agent, and in a week I bought this house that my husband had not even seen.

He walked in and said, "I love it!"  (whew!)  It fits almost all the criteria we'd worked out over years of househunting.  

And now, a few years later, the community has grown, and meets much closer to our house in a storefront shopping center  The community owns the land on which we will build a Chabad Center for Jewish Life.  And that is even closer to our house.  Many nice houses in all kinds of sizes cluster around this Chabad Center and there are several good apartment buildings within walking distance.

Chandler Arizona is an ideal community.  The city is luring many big tech businesses here with good paying jobs.  Intel has several campuses in the area, and is opening a couple of new plants in Israel.  They bring Israelis here for training, and they come to our Chabad during the months they are here.  

Within a quarter mile, we have a wonderful city park with a lake where urgan fishermen gather every day.  It has a little train that circles the park tooting and carrying the little kids who squeal with delight.  It has a roofed play area and a rotunda you can rent for large parties to BBQ.  Tennis courts, wide lawns, and paved paths make it a perfect suburban park.  I walk around that lake every day I can (which is almost always because it seldom rains here).  

The children commute to Phoenix for Hebrew School, and there is a local JCC school, too.  Chabad of Phoenix and Chabad of Scottsdale are an easy drive up the road.  

Since the housing bubble burst, house prices around this Jewish Community have become reasonable again, but I know that won't last once the new Chabad Center building goes up.  The foreclosure tsunami has not washed over this community, though there are two houses for sale on my block, and one for sale on the block adjacent to mine.  It's still possible to make a retirement move into this community, though the majority of new families are young with small children.  

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.slantedconcept.com