Among the many lux amenities offered at the Optima Verdana apartment complex in Wilmette is a pickleball court where Helena Harron spends several days a week playing pickup matches with other residents, many of whom have quickly become close friends.
After growing up in Wilmette and moving away, Harron and her family moved into the luxury apartment complex in 2023, initially planning for a short stay while she and her husband looked for the right home to buy. But they quickly felt at home in the building, and while they still hope to purchase a home in the future, they are enjoying the perks that apartment living offers.
“We are still thinking about moving to a home, but the pressure is off,” she said. “We’re very happy where we are, so it’s no longer a desperate must move. Instead if the right opportunity comes around, then we would.”
Harron is one of the many Chicago residents in the last decade who have flocked to high-amenity apartment complexes, drawn by the convenience and built-in community they offer. The demand for spaces to live, work, exercise and play, often alongside other residents, has become a driving factor for new building developers.
Face-to-face spaces are nothing new in large apartment complexes, but growing demand for them has driven developers to be more intentional and targeted in what they offer in the last few years. And the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the need for buildings to offer more recreation and work spaces that can be shared by residents.
The trend toward more comprehensive amenity spaces began well before the pandemic, said Meg Spriggs, managing director of development for Americas at Lendlease, which operates the Cascade in Lakeshore East and The Reed at Southbank. Shared office spaces became more prominent with the popularity of WeWork around 2013, and developers began to look more closely at how they could incorporate those spaces into their own buildings.
The portion of so-called live-work-play developments — buildings that offer shared office and entertainment spaces — doubled between 2012 and 2020, according to RentCafe. In 2020, about 13% of apartments nationwide were in mixed-use developments, compared to 6% in 2012.
“When those types of very flexible spaces and community-oriented spaces started coming on the market, everyone started paying attention to how they might be able to address that in their own buildings,” Spriggs said.
Before the pandemic, a trend toward making shared living spaces more like those seen in hotels and resorts also started to emerge, said Brad Lutz, managing principal and Chicago and National Multifamily Practice Leader at Baker Barrios Architects. Unit sizes have gotten smaller over the last decade, Lutz said, so the amenities have become an important accessory to tenants’ daily lives.
“The unit sizes are getting smaller so we’re making up for it by creating more options for them to have as their shared home space, if you will, in the amenities,” Lutz said.
COVID accelerated shared space trend
Apartment complexes have been expanding their amenity offerings for years, but the pandemic jump-started demand for one feature in particular: on-site work space. Remote workspace became essential. At the same time, residents who were holed up working from home also began seeking opportunities for recreation and connection in their apartment buildings.
Between 2019 and 2021, the number of people working from home at least sometimes increased about 60%, and in 2023 close to 35% of American workers worked from home on some days, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Tenants were hesitant about sharing spaces during the height of the pandemic, and developers initially tried to set up onsite workspaces in a way that maintained separation between residents. But people quickly became comfortable with the idea, and developers saw residents using those spaces more as working from home became permanent for many workers.
“I think in the beginning, co-working felt scary just because proximity was still sort of an unknown, but once we got through that and we got our vaccinations, we’re right back to the community spaces, and plus,” Spriggs said.
Now, with many residents working from home full- or part-time, developers have placed a premium on making sure shared office spaces cater to all the needs residents may have. Ali Burnham, vice president of marketing for Optima, Inc., which owns Optima Verdana as well as locations in Lakeview and Streeterville, said developers try to include a variety of coworking spaces that cater to different work styles and work-from-home needs. The buildings have multiple office spaces, meeting rooms, huddle rooms and areas where people can find a quiet corner to take calls or focus on their work.
“What we often find is in addition, people may work on the skydeck, or they may work in the party room,” Burnham said. “And so you may find this sort of organic gathering of people or people separate. It sort of depends, and they have that option.”
Developers are also beginning to offer more unique spaces, like maker spaces, jam rooms and podcast rooms, based on resident interests and a desire for more variety in amenity spaces.
Wellness drives amenity design
Many of the shared spaces developers are creating on-site have a wellness or fitness focus. Rather than having a fitness room with a few treadmills and weights, complexes will have pickleball courts, yoga studios, saunas, weight rooms and tracks, spread across multiple floors and tailored to different needs.
“I think today, life is very stressful. People’s lives are demanding, and so when they’re home, they want places for peace, places for exercise, places where they can focus on themselves, relax,” Burnham said. “And so we try to provide as many of those spaces as possible.”
For Harron, the pickleball court at Optima Verdana became a place to exercise, have fun and connect with other residents. Harron has made several friends she calls the “pickleball crew” from pickup games on the court that have blossomed into close friendships.
“It’s been a lot of fun to get to know people here and build a community here,” she said. “It’s a nice group. It’s a supportive network, and we’re even starting to celebrate people’s ups and downs in life.”
Harron’s husband frequently uses the building’s sauna and gym, she said, and her son often brings friends over to use the building’s golf simulator.
At Lendlease, developers make an effort to incorporate green spaces into the indoor environment to contribute to wellness and bring a piece of nature into the concrete city landscape. At Cascade in Lakeshore East, residents can spend their time in a conservatory, lush with green plants indoors and a walkway lined with rocks that feels like walking through a park. The windows overlook a green park outside the building.
“Winters in Chicago can sometimes be challenging, and it’s just a really nice space to sort of feel like you’re outside, but you’re really inside, protected from the elements, with a lot of green plants and windows and visibility outside,” Spriggs said.
The availability of green spaces also works into developers’ efforts to enhance sustainability at their buildings, Spriggs said, which has become a growing demand among Generation Z residents.
Developers have been paying more attention in recent years to outdoor spaces as well, building amenities that tie a building to the surrounding environment and offer more green spaces for residents. The growth in pet ownership since the pandemic has also driven developers to offer more outdoor spaces for pets to walk and play.
“I think a lot of buildings realized, hey, we need to relax our pet policies and realize that we’re going to have a huge percentage of our residents that are going to want to have a pet and want to have spaces to take them,” Lutz said.
When Optima Lakeview was in development during the pandemic, Burnham said the company looked for ways to make the outdoor amenities available year-round, even during the cold winter months. The building has an outdoor heated pool that residents can use all year, as well as fire pits on the outdoor terrace to keep residents warm in the colder months.
Programming gives space for community
Just as important as the amenities on site, developers said, is the programming that building managers offer for residents to use the spaces and connect with neighbors.
Lendlease and Optima’s buildings offer trivia nights, painting classes, movie nights and group fitness classes for residents to engage with the amenity spaces in ways that work for them. Building staff take input from residents on what type of events they’d like to see. “Just because you build it doesn’t mean it will get used and programmed on its own,” Spriggs said. “And so I think that content creation and being really in tune with the community is important.”
The programming also helps foster community among residents, bringing people together around shared interests, Burnham said.
“These events and clubs really give people that opportunity to very comfortably interact with their neighbors and figure out who they connect with, who has the same interest that they do,” Burnham said. “And they start seeing each other at this class, they see each other at another event, and eventually a friendship can blossom.”
Harron said she was surprised at how quickly she had made connections on the pickleball court that turned into more robust friendships. One of the group’s members is a chef, and she started providing complimentary cooking classes to the group once a month, using the building’s public kitchen.
As she looks toward the future, Harron said she expects to maintain those friendships even if she moves out of the building. When she moves to a single-family home, she said she hopes to come back for rounds of pickleball and invite her friends in the building to her home as well.
“We’ve just made some really tight bonds in the year and a half that I’ve been here,” she said. “We even go out once a month to celebrate each other’s birthdays, and I imagine we’re on our way to being lifelong friends.”
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