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