SELLING LIFESTYLE CENTERS -- part 6

SELLING LIFESTYLE CENTERS

Smart Growth, New Urbanism, Traditional Neighborhood Development?

Lifestyle Center, Town Center, Planned Community?

What do these phrases mean to Realtors in Florida?

Well, in a state with all kinds of ecological issues from river corridors to wetlands to sensitive beach areas to water recharge fields to the granddaddy of all ecosystems – the Everglades – good land use practices are more important than just about any place in the nation.

Whatever the buzzword is of the day, Smart Growth is very important to home buyers and even retail, office, commercial clients.

Florida Association of Realtors past president Michael Dooley, of Illustrated Properties in Hobe Sound, puts it this way:

“The obvious benefit of Smart Growth, with respect to the mixed used concept, is you conserve infrastructure and save energy,” he said. “You also tend to get more of a community harmony, where neighbor knows neighbor. Abacoa (in Jupiter) is a bustling community day and night.”

Dooley said he believes over time, statistics will show that compact developments deter crime, because they have more neighbors to watch out for trouble, more constant activity and a stronger sense of community.

“One of the challenges is a lot of cities have 30- to 40-year-old growth plans. Even though they have been state-mandated to create growth management plans, they have created them under the old (suburban) model. So when an innovative concept comes along, the local code prohibits it,” he said. “It is a real challenge to rewrite codes and it is important for Realtors to stay involved in the process.”

Dooley has worked to educate communities about Smart Growth. He said governments need more educating than buyers.

“The buyer that comes into the office today is a new culture of buyer. The youth today are a different breed, they are much more sophisticated. They come looking for that type of housing,” he said of residences close to transit, pedestrian activities, commerce, offices, parks, education and other amenities.

Wright is an award-winning journalist who has written about growth, development, architecture, town planning and urban issues for two decades. He works in a traditional, walkable, sustainable community in a restored historic home in the heart of Miami’s Little Havana.

SELLING LIFESTYLE CENTERS -- part 5

SELLING LIFESTYLE CENTERS

In the northeast corner of Florida, between Jacksonville and St. Augustine, the Houston-based Hines Company -- one of the largest privately held real estate development, investment and management companies in the world – has created the planned community of Palencia.

Palencia is built to conserve wetlands and other precious acreage around the homes and compact Village Center. Jackie Ross, a Realtor from nearby Ponte Vedra Beach, said lifestyle centers are a relatively new concept in the Jacksonville region, but they are rapidly growing in popularity.

“It is clearly evident people like this concept. Sales have soared, and appreciation has been wonderful in Palencia to this point. It is expected to continue. Buyers like the idea of walking or bike riding to neighborhood shopping and amenities.”

Realtor Cheryl Grieb, of Olde Kissimmee Realty in explosively-growing Osceola County, said Smart Growth embraces high density, so a community can preserve land for open space, water recharge and recreation.

“It’s a live, work play as a whole concept. It creates a stronger bond, a huge sense of community,” she said. With health in everyone’s mind, it’s great to (live where you can) walk to grocery store, the movies.

“With Smart Growth, you have a myriad of choices: the unit over a retail center, a townhouse, a single family home, a condo,” she continued. “Walkability, environmentally friendly, variety of choices, cutting down on use of automobile, public transit, revitalization -- that’s Smart Growth.”

Wright is an award-winning journalist who has written about growth, development, architecture, town planning and urban issues for two decades. He works in a traditional, walkable, sustainable community in a restored historic home in the heart of Miami’s Little Havana.

TOMORROW: Smart Growth Sidebar

SELLING LIFESTYLE CENTERS -- part 4

SELLING LIFESTYLE CENTERS

Realtor Michael Dooley -- a Smart Growth advocate, former president of the Florida Association of Realtors and former member of Martin County’s local planning and growth agency – said there is no way to put an exact face on the typical lifestyle community buyer.

“Look at Abacoa, Traditions, Disney’s Celebration -- all of these communities have a good mix of young, active professionals and active retires,” Dooley said, adding that the only group that sales are low in is older retirees, who may be uncomfortable with the concept of new-build town centers with mixed use.

In Orlando, just three miles east of the center of downtown, developers continue to build compact urban forms, such as the live-work unit, on the site of the former Orlando Naval Training Center now known as Baldwin Park.

Realtor Matt Harkins, president of Harkins Development Corporation, built 23 urban buildings, each containing a pair of live-work units in the downtown section of Baldwin Park. The live-work units accommodate to attorneys, CPAs, therapists and other professionals.

The units can be built out three different ways, but the most pure urban form has an office space of about 600 square feet, a studio apartment of about the same space above the garage and 2,000 square foot primary residence. Each has a separate entrance, so a person could live in the main space, have his office in the separate but attached space and rent out the studio apartment for additional revenue.

TOMORROW: St. Augustine-Jacksonville

SELLING LIFESTYLE CENTERS -- part 3

SELLING LIFESTYLE CENTERS

In Central Florida, the city of Altamonte Springs has completely bought into the Smart Growth concept of compact development with a mix of uses. The city is partnering with several developers to create a Town Center, Main Street and structures as tall as 20 stories.

Located 10 miles north of Orlando, Altamonte Springs decided it didn’t want to be a sprawled-out suburb.

Frank Martz, director of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency and Planning Services, said the Altamonte decided its urban core would be located on at a pair of major state routes and a picturesque body of water – Crane’s Roost Lake.

“We call it True Urbanism,” Martz said of Altamonte’s take on New Urbanism. “It is transit-oriented, very dense, and pedestrian friendly.”

In a city with a population under 50,000 where the tallest buildings for ages stood at only three or four stories, plans now call for 15- to 20-story office structures, apartments and condominiums built around Crane’s Roost Lake. The Altamonte Town Center, on the sight of a former conventional retail plaza, will feature a dense urban mix of uses.

“We feel real strongly that a true town center requires somebody to live there,” said Michael Lant, president of Suwanee, Georgia- based MJ Lant Developments, which is development manager for Altamonte Springs Investments, a major player among the several companies developing in the Seminole County city.

“But you can’t just plop these down anywhere,” Lant said of town or lifestyle centers. “The right elements exist in Altamonte: a gorgeous lake -- with a boardwalk, benches and millions of dollars of city improvements -- sits right in the center of the development.”

Lant's firm developed a mixed use condominium enhanced by having restaurants on the ground floor on Crane’s Roost Lake.

“Altamonte rezoned an entire area because it had a vision for the urbanism it wanted to create,” he said. “Only a few cities are catching on that there is demand for well-done town centers. A lot of cities are still afraid of density and height. They don’t understand it can work in a city that is even suburban in origin that needs to create a town center. Altamonte is ahead of the curve.”

TOMORROW: Martin County

SELLING LIFESTYLE CENTERS -- part 2

SELLING LIFESTYLE CENTERS

In Tallahassee, the St. Joe Company – Florida’s largest private landowner – is building a very urban town center with a YMCA on its second floor in Southwood. Southwood also features an education center, a central park on a lake, walking trails and more than 1,000 acres of green space.

Speaking when he was Vice President of Sales at St. Joe, Realtor Chris Drury said with a professional on-staff serving as an Art of Living Director, Southwood is clearly “a lifestyle experience, not just a place to purchase a house.”

“We are selling a lifestyle and creating a place where you can truly live, work and play. People love these developments because they have a sense of community where you can walk to things and know your neighbors,” he said.

For Realtors interested in lifestyle centers, Drury said the key is educating the buyer about a product that goes far beyond the initial buyer request for “shelter that I can afford.”

“Once you learn about town centers and planned communities, you combine that with your local knowledge and experience,” advised Drury, now president of Kiawah Island Real Estate. “We are focusing on the entire community, not just the single residence.”

Jackie Moalli, St. Joe’s development director for the Capital Region, serves as the commercial Realtor at Southwood. She said the mix of uses in proximity makes the development more attractive for commercial and residential users.

“It is very appealing for a company to be able to attract their employees with an environment where you can work out at lunch time, where you can walk downstairs to a café after work,” she said. “For retail and restaurant uses, you not only have a built-in market because of people living right there, but you also have a sense that the local shops are part of the homebuyer’s investment. People want these to do well, so they can frequent them.”

Moalli also noted that Southwood has a very healthy office component, including the state-of-the-art headquarters of Datamaxx Group, one of the fastest growing technology companies in the country. The 32,500-square-foot facility includes a 24/7 Network Operations Center and technologically advanced video conferencing center.

TOMORROW: Central Florida

SELLING LIFESTYLE CENTERS

SELLING LIFESTYLE CENTERS

By Steve Wright

More than half a century ago, pioneering developer Don M. Casto Sr. opened the one of the nation’s first regional shopping center in a suburb east of Columbus, Ohio.

He negotiated with famed retailers James Cash Penney and Sebastian Kresge to open stores far from the familiar Downtown/Main Street environment in his Town & Country shopping center.

Now, six decades after starting the trend toward suburban retailing, the Casto Company is part of a large trend to rebuild a sense of Main Street in lifestyle centers.

Lifestyle centers, which feature a mix of uses in a planned development that allows residents to be less car-dependant, are becoming very popular in Florida from the big cities to the small towns.

Drew Smith, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Sarasota-based Casto Lifestyle Properties, said lifestyle centers are a fabulous tool for residential and commercial Realtors. Casto has lifestyle centers underway in Sarasota, Lakeland, Winter Park and the Bradenton-Sarasota border. The mixed use developer is looking into a fifth Sunshine State project in Daytona Beach and a sixth one in an urban part of Sarasota.

“The commercial Realtor can tell his client (that the lifestyle center’s) tenant base can be 10 percent of sales -- that’s gravy,” Smith said. “The advantage to the retailer is the customer never gets in their car. Once they get in their car, they can go anywhere, but keep them from their car and you own them!”
One Hundred Central is a very urban lifestyle center in the heart of downtown Sarasota. It takes up a city block and features condos above 60,000 square feet of retail including a Whole Foods Market.

Casto is also developing lifestyle centers in less dense urban settings, such as the huge planned community of Lakewood Ranch on the Manatee-Sarasota County border. Casto is developing the Main Street portion into a town center with an art cineplex, gourmet grocery, office above retail and lakeside condominiums within a short walk from the retail-office mix.

TOMORROW: St. Joe Company – Florida’s largest private landowner