ANDERSON — “We have a small lake,” Dan Harman joked as he looked out over the University Village lake on Monday. “It is so small the fish can only have a one-room school.”

At 80, Harman has more time for jokes like that nowadays. That one happens to be his favorite joke about the retirement community he calls home.

Harman and his wife, Betty Ann, live on Ravens Lake Drive in University Village, a small neighborhood of condominiums laid out over property owned by Anderson University.

The residents of the village are privileged to live in red brick condos built in rows of three with neatly-trimmed lawns, a sprawling man-made lake surrounded by a walking path and countless trees.

The trees began to turn in recent weeks, dotting the landscape of the small community with red and orange autumn hues making the neighborhood seem like a vacation destination, rather than an Anderson neighborhood just blocks from the concrete jungle of Scatterfield Road on Anderson’s east side.

Harman said his days at University Village aren’t such a departure from his former life before retirement. Born in Maryland, Harman remarked on Monday that he was born in a row house on a narrow Baltimore street and “I’m finishing up my life in a row house.”

Though he and Betty Ann own their condo, it’s connected to two other units and will be given back to Anderson University upon their death.

University Village is unique in that Anderson University owns the land on which the condos are built and many Anderson University grads return to the village for retirement.

As part of the university’s Real Estate Gifts Program, University Village residents leave their home to the university when they pass, rather than to family members as tradition would expect.

Bob Coffman of Anderson University said the details of the transaction do not include a will. “It’s not willed back. It passes automatically. When people move in, they keep what’s known as a life estate, which gives those persons the right to live there as long as either one of them is alive. When the last life tenant passes, the property then passes back to the university. The university owns the right to have all the interest in the property transferred to the university.”

For Harman, it’s a fair trade.

He counts his neighborhood as the safest place to live in all of Anderson because university police do regular patrols along the concrete roads of the small subdivision. Since many of the residents of the village are retired, the Harmans consider themselves in good company, living just homes away from their old friends from Anderson University.

Though it’s not technically a retirement community, Coffman said most of the residents in the village’s 25 units are retired and have some association with either Anderson University or the Church of God.

A perk of living in the village, Harman said, is continuous lawn care by university staff. Residents are able to enjoy their retirement without worrying about trimming bushes, mowing the lawn, or shoveling snow.

When the snow finally does fall, Harman said, university officials are almost too expedient. “The first time it snows, they come and clean them. Of course, they don’t have to because it’s still snowing.”