How Berman Helped Property Developers Create an Optimal Master-Planned Community to Live, Learn, Work, and Play
Summary
What do you do when you want to build the community of the future? In the case of the developers of Lake Nona, a 17-square-mile, master-planned community in Orlando, Florida, they required operations and management vendors that understood their vision and took an ownership mentality to develop standards and procedures that would support it.
Berman was hired to provide Lake Nona’s developer with various janitorial, repair, and facility services. Eventually, Lake Nona grew to become one of the nation’s best-selling master-planned communities and most innovative life sciences hubs. As a result, the developers put more trust in Berman, and Berman became Lake Nona’s preferred provider for overall property management, facilities management, and operations.
Berman acts as an owner’s representative for all of Lake Nona’s property management and operations and ensures the community’s high standards for innovation, technology, and aesthetics are met to deliver an unrivaled experience for all who live in, work in, or visit Lake Nona.
Challenge
Lake Nona was planned to be a 17 sq mile world class development within Orlando, FL focused on life science, sports, and wellness. Community features include the following:
Residential
- Unique, walkable neighborhoods that include various home types from apartments to single-family homes and large estates
- Lake Nona Golf & Country Club
- 40% of Lake Nona is reserved for open green space, with over 40 miles of trails, community parks, and 1,000 acres of lakes and waterways
- The first community in the United States to be designated a Cisco Iconic Smart + Connected Community
Commercial and Life Sciences
- Home to the first accredited university-based College of Medicine in Orlando (UCF College of Medicine)
- University of Central Florida Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences
- Valencia College
- A-rated public and private schools and educational facilities, from Pre-K to Ph.D.
- Tens of thousands of students on-site in Lake Nona
- Millions of square feet of office space including Fortune 500 corporate tenants
- Entire facilities dedicated to Innovative Biomedical Research and Laboratory Spaces
Healthcare and Wellness
- UCF Lake Nona Medical Center
- Lake Nona Medical City (millions of square feet of clinical, institutional, and laboratory space)
- Home to the first stand-alone Children’s Hospital in Orlando
- Home of the Lake Nona Life Project, a long-term community health and wellness study that examines the associations between lifestyles and health among Lake Nona residents and workers
Lifestyle
- Central Florida’s first inflatable aqua park
- Lake Nona Town Center, which includes various restaurants, shops, and entertainment venues
- Boxi Park, Central Florida’s first venue built from repurposed shipping containers
- Home to the U.S. Tennis Association National Campus, the largest tennis facility in the world
- First Autonomous Vehicle/Shuttle program operating in Central Florida.
In the past fifteen years since its initial conception, Lake Nona underwent significant growth and changes as new construction and tenants were added. Other property owners have also purchased land from the developers and built their own buildings and properties not related to the Lake Nona community project.
As a result, Lake Nona had multiple vendors responsible for various property management and facility services, which caused confusion and different aesthetic outcomes. Each vendor had different standards and procedures in place. This also caused inefficiencies in service time and workforce deployment and overall cost to all parties.
Lake Nona needed an owner’s representative that could manage the day-to-day operations, maintenance, and performance of its vast community, so the developers could focus on the next fifteen years of construction to fully realize their vision.
Solution
Berman was one of the first vendors hired to simply provide janitorial services to large properties and offices in Lake Nona. As Lake Nona grew and construction increased, more vendors won bids for various services needed for the community. It became apparent quickly, though, that service inconsistencies and inefficiencies were affecting the environment and experience Lake Nona wanted to be known for.
Berman Rises to the Top
Time and time again, Berman proved to meet Lake Nona’s needs and create positive experiences for visitors anytime they entered a property managed or maintained by Berman. Lake Nona’s developers gave Berman more opportunities to establish and implement standards and procedures throughout the 17 square mile development, well beyond the single scope of janitorial services that Berman was originally hired to provide.
Eventually, Berman became Lake Nona’s property management, facilities management, and operations preferred provider, offering a wide range of services to support Lake Nona’s needs and initiatives. These services include overall property management, facility management, and many services such as janitorial services, on-demand repairs, landscape maintenance and program management, power washing, and disaster response.
Featured Service: Landscaping
Before Berman managed all landscaping projects in Lake Nona, there were several landscaping vendors that Lake Nona staff managed, which caused several issues.
Each vendor would use different equipment and have different standards in which they applied to their work. For example, some companies would mow the grass down to three inches, while others would cut the grass down to six inches.
As Lake Nona managers assessed the situation, they determined it made more sense to have an integrated solutions provider that would handle all of the landscaping to streamline services and reduce costs.
Today, Berman is responsible for all landscaping services in Lake Nona, including implementing new technologies, like autonomous lawnmowers, to support Lake Nona’s green initiatives.
Results
Lake Nona is a growing community. With Berman, it has a reliable owner’s rep that can act as a one-stop-shop for all property management and facility services. When each building or property is built, Berman can recommend how many cleaners, landscapers, and maintenance technicians are needed, determine who to assign as property managers to ensure optimized operations, and create a plan for ongoing success.
Berman acts as a single point of contact for all tenants in Lake Nona to reach if they require assistance or need emergency repairs. This ensures quicker service as well as issue mitigation as workers can identify problems and report them (a Berman cleaning crew may see something that needs a repair right away and report it to a Berman property manager who can then assign it to a Berman repair technician), unlike earlier days when vendors may have worked in silos and concentrated on their designated services.
Innovation and Technology
As a city of the future, innovation and technology play a crucial role in how Lake Nona inspires human potential. Berman helps Lake Nona achieve this mission by supporting all efforts to implement new technologies as they emerge and become relevant. These include the following:
- – Performing landscaping and tree trimming services to create autonomous shuttle lanes for electric self-driving shuttles transporting residents and workers to predetermined, learned points in Lake Nona.
- – Implementing View Smart Window Glass in new and existing Lake Nona buildings. This innovative evolution of window glass automatically adjusts with the sun to provide better sunlight access, prevent headaches and drowsiness, and increase energy and productivity. Smart Windows also reduces energy consumption, improving Lake Nona’s sustainability efforts.
- – Installing Healthe Lights in bathrooms and other high traffic areas in Lake Nona buildings. These lights are designed to automatically sanitize surfaces overnight with UV light and purify indoor air.
Setting Lake Nona Up for the Future
Although Lake Nona is one of the most popular and impressive master-planned communities in the United States and is a model for other similarly-planned cities, the vision is not nearly complete. Over a thousand people move to Lake Nona each year, and new commercial construction is planned for new organizations and businesses that want to be part of Lake Nona.
With Berman, Lake Nona has a single vendor with an ownership mentality that will help it reach its vision for optimized living, learning, working, and playing within a single community.