How Sweet It Is! -- Bellevue's Pacific Regent Offers A Plush Retirement For High Achievers

For former Hong Kong restaurateur Leo Landau, Bellevue's Pacific Regent retirement residence is one more adventure in an eventful life.

And life is sweet indeed at the Regent, the St. Moritz of retirement homes. Like the other residents of the high-rise condominium, Landau dines regularly on fine cuisine in the elegantly appointed dining room. He frequently stops to chat with friends in the spacious lobby, where brass chandeliers gleam from the high ceiling, fresh flowers adorn the tables and music frequently issues from the ebony grand piano. In the steamy exercise room adjoining the lobby, Landau's wife, Joan, swims 20 laps every day.

Coming from Hong Kong, neither of the Landaus is accustomed to driving on the right-hand side of the road, so they are among the residents who depend on the Regent's van for shopping, banking, medical appointments and most other services. Regent social director Pam Heuser also arranges excursions to the symphony and opera and to Olympia to watch the Legislature in action. She further schedules frequent in-house parties, where entertainers often are residents and members of the staff.

The 17-story building is a world of soft, pale carpets, spotless furnishings and sparkling windowpanes overlooking the lake and mountains. It's isolated from untidy kids and barking dogs, sinks full of dishes and muddy tracks from the garden. Those who live here have had all that, and now they're enjoying serenity and order.

They are also living in a place that neatly mirrors two of the strongest trends of the past decade on the Eastside, as reflected in the new U.S. census figures for 1990.

With the Eastside population both aging and gaining in affluence - through the 1980s, the percentage of people over 65 and the average home price both doubled - luxury retirement homes would appear to be a growth industry. Despite the Regent's hefty tab (between $125,000 and $375,000 for lifetime occuncy, plus monthly maintenance fees that have climbed as high as $1,600 for a ce), the building has a waiting list for its 114 units. The developer plans to break ground in July 1992 on the property for a second tower of 20 stories, for which about one-fourth of the 142 apartments already have been sold.

You can knock on virtually any one of the polished doors along the quiet, peach-toned corridors and find a wealth of history and accomplishment.

-- Henry Bacon founded a chain of building-supply stores that bear his name.

-- George Kinnear was director of the Washington state Department of Revenue under Gov. Dan Evans and previously a state legislator and member of the Republican National Committee.

-- Winston Brown, as president of the Howard S. Wright Construction Co., built the Space Needle and the original Seafirst building, sometimes called "the big black box the Space Needle came in."

-- William Wilkins, retired from the King County Superior Court bench, is the only surviving member of the 32-judge Nuremberg panel and, at 93, the oldest Regent resident. On a cabinet in his study are medals from two world wars, including a Silver Star for valor on the Western Front in 1918.

-- Jane White was a Los Angeles lawyer for 52 years and is a founder of the National Charity League.

-- Gordie Richards capped off his 50-year career as a golf pro at Overlake Country Club. Now 83, he owns the Snohomish golf course, where he still teaches occasionally and plays a round, "but not like I used to!" His career-low score is 64; he has seven holes in one.

The residents' roll includes an internationally known architect and a distinguished geologist, as well as lawyers, bankers, educators, authors, artists, musicians, two retired admirals and a general. The Regent also is home to a number of prominent entrepreneurs who have relinquished their reins.

The complex's existing high-rise with on-premises health-care facility, completed in 1987, was conceived by Tony Hepworth of Pennyfarthing Development Co., a condominium builder of Vancouver, B.C. Pennyfarthing this year opened a residence similar to the Pacific Regent in La Jolla, Calif.

Most of the 54 beds of the Pacific Regent's health-care facility, which occupies the second and third floors, now accommodate patients from outside the residence. Health-care administrator Susan Quigley says that "although our residents' average age is in the late 80s, they're fairly healthy," perhaps confirming the recent Census Bureau correlation between affluence and longevity.

Quigley says that with the addition of the second tower, the management projects that the Regent's own residents will be supporting the health-care facility in about 10 years.

Despite the outward serenity at the Regent, the maintenance fees, which some say have increased by more than 40 percent since the building opened, led residents to file a lawsuit early this year, seeking to take over the management from the developer. The suit currently is in mediation.

But "the fact we're suing doesn't impair our enjoyment of living here," says Owen Clarke, president of the Homeowners' Association. Clarke is a retired lawyer from Yakima who served the federal government during the Eisenhower administration.

Others echo Clarke's assertion that a tiff with the developer is but a minor irritation for people with lifetimes of outstanding achievement.

Landau retired four years ago from his Hong Kong chain of five restaurants. His son, David, opened Landau's Restaurant in Bellevue's Koll Center, and his parents moved here last August.

The elder Landaus' apartment is a gallery of exquisite paintings in the Chinese style by Joan, a professional artist in Australia before she married Leo in 1947.

Joan usually cooks breakfast and lunch, and Leo "is learning to wash the dishes," she says.

"Believe it or not, for me washing dishes is a joy!" he intercedes. "I always had staff and servants to do everything, so housekeeping is new." He takes further pleasure in polishing their intricately carved Oriental antiques, having declared them off-limits to the Regent's staff.

Landau's 78 years have not been all roses. The son of an Austrian adventurer who landed in China early in this century, he spent the World War II years in a Japanese military prison.

But after the war ended, he retrieved his restaurants and much of his former staff and "within a fortnight, it was as if nothing had happened. The same beggar was back on the corner!"

That resiliency enabled Landau to recover from three strokes, the last causing a deep coma that persisted for four months. He credits his recovery to his doctors, his wife, prayers by friends of all faiths and "a new lease from `the man upstairs.'

"I want to pay for that `lease' by doing what I can for the patients downstairs," Landau declares. He makes regular visits to the Regent's nursing floors, which he brightens with a deep faith and worldly wit.

Married couples occupy only about half the Regent's apartments, for at this age level there inevitably are many widows and widowers. But the number of singles recently was reduced by two.

"I was sitting in the lobby one day," recalls Ralph Benaroya, a retired businessman, "when in walks this beautiful woman."

"I'd come to look at a condo," says Flora Correa Benaroya, a prominent artist whose first husband, Seattle dentist Dr. Roy Correa, died several years ago. Along with an active artist's schedule, Flora Correa had been trying to maintain her Mercer Island home of 30 years but finally decided, in 1988, to move to the Regent.

It's a society where nobody needs to be lonely, and Correa recalls that from the time she arrived, "every time I'd go to a party, Ralph would find his way over to me. Then he asked me out dancing. They didn't play our kind of music, but we still laugh about that evening."

Several months ago, Judge Wilkins married them, and all the Regent residents were invited to a reception in the lobby.

"Everybody came, and it was such a happy occasion," declares Lucille Wilkins, the judge's wife of 63 years. "There were flowers everywhere, our wonderful chef outdid herself with the food, and the champagne was flowing.

"Flora and Ralph had been inseparable. It seemed just natural that they should get married.

"We were all so happy for them!"