Soon, if a resident at Miami's Grovenor House on the Biscayne Bay needs his car, he'll only have to press a single button on a "wireless concierge" device to call up his automobile. The same goes for residents of Paramount's Royal Palm Communities, Paramount Beach, and Bay projects, where restaurant reservations and restricted social club access are just a button away, thanks to a wireless touchpad panel.
Who's handling all these resident requests? It's not the Jetsons' ever-efficient housekeeper Rosie the Robot. Instead, these examples reveal how a growing number of properties, particularly high-end buildings, are incorporating a wide variety of advanced technologies designed to support and enhance their residents' lifestyle.
Such offerings, particularly in new luxury condos, are getting plenty of ink in developers' and owners' advertising and marketing efforts. Advertisements tout virtual concierges, "electronic" fitness instruction, and high-tech security, sharing equal billing with more traditional amenities such as swimming pools and valet parking.
As Jetsonian as such options may sound, they also are the natural outgrowth of technological advances that are now being applied to the residential sector. The emergence of fiber to the premises (an extension of broadband that promises greater bandwidth for home tech users), plasma TV screens, and smaller, highly functional, and more reliable handheld units, combined with residents' increasing tech savvy, is making it possible–and potentially profitable–for property owners and developers to offer a variety of lifestyle technologies to their residents.
Practical Technology
Some of these new "amenities" are grounded in the all-too-real world. For instance, in this post-Sept. 11 world, security is important to renters and condo owners alike. At Clinton West on New York's West Side, all studio and one- and two-bedroom apartments come with electronic entry systems. These systems, which are basically high-tech locks, allow apartment entries to be monitored via a centralized computer system. In addition to securing the premises, the system offers a convenience to residents: Their doors are easily programmable, eliminating the worry, woe, and locksmith charges of lost keys.
Clinton West also has paid attention to how residents live their lives. Based on those observations and research, the development has concentrated on bringing workplace amenities into the home, an effort that serves the basic needs of a telecommuter or the multiple-computer household. Each apartment unit will be wired so that residents can share printers and computer files throughout their unit, enabling them to say goodbye to messy tangles of wires dangling among different computers. Room outlets will each contain as many as four telephone lines and will be able to accommodate high-definition digital TV as well as DSL or a cable modem.
It's a smart move. The "fastest growing area in broadband is the telecommuter," says Dan O'Connell, director of fiber-to-the-premises business development at Verizon, the provider of fiber and broadband services based in New York. O'Connell estimates there are 44 million telecommuters in the country today.
Residents who work from home do represent a lucrative market for property owners and vendors alike. Whether they telecommute daily or occasionally, such residents are more in need of advanced technology, particularly Internet access, in their apartments. "The U.S. has an economy that stays under the national census' radar–contractors working out of their homes," says Tara Thomason, a market intelligence consultant at the Tara Thomason Co. in Austin, Texas. "There are teams of contractors banding together, just like small companies, but [they] are not included in 'employer surveys,' as they don't employ anyone but themselves from a legal perspective. These folks are busy and are contributing to our economy in a big way. They demand high-speed/broadband connections in order to get their work done efficiently."
Virtual Assistance
Other lifestyle technologies are less about practicality and more about convenience. They're called virtual concierges or residential information systems, but the name makes little difference: The objectives are the same. These technologies can deliver building as well as local services (such as restaurant reservations) directly to residents, giving them wireless, push-button access to the good life.
At the three Paramount properties in the Miami area, for example, a wireless concierge links residents to restaurants and room service. "It's a mobile panel–you can take it to the pool," says Dan Kodsi, president and CEO of Royal Palm Communities, the developer of the Paramount properties. Known as the "P-link," this wireless concierge device works anywhere that a resident gets Internet access and can be used to control a unit's lights, televisions, video, and more. "One panel controls the entire home and lifestyle," says Kodsi.
BAP-Newleaf, which developed The Cypress Club in Fort Myers, Fla., has created a "personal residential intelligence system module" (also known as "PRISM"), which is a remote concierge panel included in each of the development's 292 units. The portable, handheld device lets residents reserve spa treatments; send for their cars, which are automatically brought around to the building's porte cochere; switch lights off and on in their units; change CDs; and even see the bills covered by their monthly maintenance fee. It's a completely technological experience: Residents can do all of these things without speaking to a single person, from anywhere in the building or the world, the development company says.
Others offer similar amenities. The Related Group of Florida calls the concierge system at its 500 Brickell project "IRIS," for Intuitive Resident Information System. Part of the development's "smart" condominium design, this wireless touchpad panel appears in each unit in the luxury building. It's basically a portable, handheld device with a 12-inch color screen that weighs just two pounds, but it packs a lot into a small footprint.
Residents at 500 Brickell can think of the system as a concierge, using it to contact the valet, obtain information from the condo association, and control unit security. They can also use it as a portable home entertainment center, using the device to watch a DVD, view a show recorded by TiVo, play a CD, or manage just about anything that is linked to the audiovisual system in their unit. (Another plus in nearly bilingual Miami: The 500 Brickell system can communicate in Spanish as well as English.) And, just like their counterparts at The Cyprus Club, 500 Brickell residents can access these services and amenities anywhere in the world through a WiFi connection.
"Wireless concierge finally allows the residents to utilize all the amenities of the building wherever and whenever they want," says developer Ugo Colombo, the president of Miami-based real estate developer CMC Group and the brainchild behind Grovenor House's wireless concierge offering. "They are no longer tied down to the telephone or having to visit the spa desk or front desk to make a reservation."
Residents also are no longer inhibited by language and other communication barriers. "It eliminates any possibility of miscommunication," says Colombo. Ultimately that also should translate to happier, more satisfied residents.
The concierge concept also can raise a property's profile among the buying or renting public. Paramount uses P-link as a branding tool, according to Kodsi. "We're linking all the Paramount buildings together" so that residents of one property can access the amenities of any of the others, he explains. That includes the company's newest property, a "condotel" under construction in Las Vegas. "You'll be able to sit in Miami and reserve a VIP room in Las Vegas."
But lifestyle applications extend beyond the wireless concierge. CMC Group's Grovenor House uses the same technology to support a high-tech virtual sales center that gives prospective residents a view of a unit, the building, and their amenities.
Technology gets really personal at Bellamaré, a luxury high-rise condo on Williams Island in Florida developed by Florida-based WCI Communities. This property offers a "personal digital assistant" for owners who are into physical fitness. It works like this: Each resident has a personal code in the community's server, which allows exercisers to track their health and workout regimen when they use the fitness equipment. The program also records the number of calories burned. The upside? No more time wasted jotting weights and performance levels onto oversized index cards that are stored where anyone (read: a nosy neighbor down the hall) can retrieve them. The downside for residents: No excuse to work so closely with those well-toned trainers anymore, either.
Get Connected
It's no wonder that much of the action surrounding lifestyle applications is in South Florida where confluence of money, prime real estate, and the desire for pampering create the ideal environment for developers and property owners to introduce and test technology-based amenities.
After all, offering these applications "is not cheap," according to John Deinhardt, senior vice president at Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based Colonial Development, which developed Europa by the Sea in Lauderdale by the Sea, Fla. (The property also provides a virtual concierge to residents.) "This is high-end."
But as technology gets cheaper and fiber extends its reach into urban, suburban, and rural areas, tech experts expect such amenities to spread out both geographically and demographically. Among the groups worth watching: students, who expect technology to be available, useful, and entertaining (56 percent participate in interactive gaming alone, which requires high-speed access and paves the way for other interactive applications, according to O'Connell), and baby boomers, who still have a lot of working years ahead of them.
As their retirement plans evaporate along with their pension and 401(k) accounts, this last group is adjusting its expectations for retirement and at-home technology. "The work force age is increasing as this over-55 age group is having to work longer before retiring or move into part time or contract work arrangements in order to maintain a desirable lifestyle," says Thomason. "This group has become accustomed to the luxury of fast connections at work. When they go home and begin to use the Internet for their personal interests or for work they are conducting from their home, they get frustrated with dial-up connections and bite the bullet to make the change to high-speed."
That increased bandwidth offers the potential for more lifestyle, entertainment, and personal fitness tech applications only available now in the most luxurious condos and apartments.
But in the future, who knows what might be available? Richard Holtz, president of Infinisys, a low-voltage design firm based in Daytona, Fla., that brings technology-based solutions to multifamily properties, planned development communities, commercial buildings, and student housing, believes "we eventually will see things holographically."
If he's right, residents who live in high-end condos may still have to dress themselves, but the technology in the building will be able to do just about anything else.
–Teri Robinson is a freelance writer in New York.
Stumbling Blocks
Lifestyle technologies must overcome obstacles to achieve widespread adoption. As cool as a combination portable wireless concierge-TiVo player sounds, there are some formidable obstacles to widespread adoption–namely cost, awareness, and the technical capabilities.
But Chris Acker, director of ancillary services at Cleveland-based Forest City Residential Management, notes that even in the apartment market, where rents have been considerably more modest than the sales in the high-flying condo market, multifamily companies are investing heavily in high-tech infrastructure. They're laying infrastructure, forging agreements with service providers, and buying plasma screens and handheld devices.
Of course, this all costs money, and many multifamily firms are still uncertain about the returns they will get on these investments. "The management companies are still expected to sell these amenities, just like any other," says Tara Thomason, a market intelligence consultant at the Tara Thomason Co. in Austin, Texas. "It is ultimately their responsibility to get the rents and fees up high enough to cover costs." That can be a hard sell at many apartment properties, after the economic woes and stumbling job markets of the last few years.
Others have tried a more hybrid approach. At Colonial's Lauderdale by the Sea, "we provide [the concierge service] as part of the basic agreement with buyers," John Deinhardt says. But if residents want expanded offerings, they pay the extra fees directly to the service providers. This is similar to the model that property owners use for introducing fiber to residents, notes Thomason.
When it comes to selling lifestyle technologies, though, properties can encounter difficulty, in part because the technology is just so new. "I don't think people can imagine what it will be like until they have it," says Dan Kodsi.
Thomason concurs. "I think there is still a lot of educating left to be done on this front. Most residents have no idea what is possible in the realm of anything other than Internet access when it comes to fiber," she says. "Unfortunately for the builders, developers, owners, and managers of [multifamily properties] as well as the broadband providers, marketing will need to focus on educating and getting the word out to potential and existing residents regarding security upgrades, smart appliances, and even wireless capabilities within the home. ... Until people know what is possible and available, they are not going to pay for it."
Others believe there must be a fundamental shift in the attitude and business practices of property owners before high-tech amenities are adopted. Lenders tend to "look at the balance sheet and cash flow every month," says Richard Holtz, president of Infinisys, a low-voltage design firm based in Daytona, Fla., that brings technology-based solutions to multifamily properties, planned development communities, commercial buildings, and student housing. "But [properties] are building today not for next year; they're building for 20 years from now. You can't keep an infrastructure that will be obsolete."