Community: Optima Signature

Montessori school doubling space at Optima Signature in Chicago

The Guidepost Montessori at Magnificent Mile school is more than doubling in size to accommodate the addition of an elementary school at Optima Signature, a mixed-use development at 220 E. Illinois Street in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood. Optima, Inc., developer of the building, announced the school will lease an additional 14,000 square feet—the building’s last available retail space—with plans to open this fall to serve first through fifth grades.

“Since the school’s opening just over a year ago, many of the families living at Optima Signature—or who live or work in the surrounding neighborhood—have embraced the school’s convenience factor and its quality Montessori early childhood education program,” said David Hovey Sr., CEO of Optima, Inc. “Whether you want to grab breakfast or lunch, take your pet in for a check-up or you’re in need of an elementary school, the retail line-up at Optima Signature is dynamic and truly fills a niche in the growing Streeterville neighborhood to make the building a destination for people in the area.”

This is the property’s second commercial leasing announcement in as many months, following the lease-up of all 22 furnished office suites at Optima Signature. In addition to Guidepost Montessori, retail tenants include Egg Harbor Café, a restaurant specializing in breakfast, brunch and lunch; GoodVets Streeterville, a full-service veterinarian redefining pet care; RUNAWAY fitness, a run conditioning fitness studio and Bedazzled Nails & Spa.

Read the full feature at RE Journals

Visit Optima Signature for more details

Apartment Tower in Chicago to Convert Office Space to Classroom Space During COVID-19 Pandemic

A 57-story apartment tower in the Streeterville neighborhood plans to convert some of its office space to small classrooms, betting that frazzled families will seek space outside the home to conduct remote learning amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The 490-unit Optima Signature, a skyscraper at 220 E. Illinois St. known for its bright red lower levels, is no ordinary schoolhouse.

Yet with many parents working from home since March 2019 amid COVID-19, and with many schools planning to conduct classes virtually this fall, the building’s owner believes there will be a demand for learning pods. So-called “pandemic pods” and “micro-schools” allow small groups of kids from close-knit families to study together in person with a teacher, tutor or parent.

Widespread closures of schools and day cares has left Chicago-area workers and employers scrambling for solutions.

Glencoe-based architecture and development firm Optima, which completed the Streeterville high-rise in 2017, in August 2020 began marketing four of its 25 office suites for educational purposes.

In an area of the city known for high-rises and lacking homes with yards, Optima believes parents are feeling the stress of homes also serving as offices and classrooms.

“For people who are living in the downtown environment, where they might be sharing a smaller space with two working parents and kids, those spaces can get small and loud and distracting,” Optima Marketing Director Ali Burnham said. “Here, you’re not fighting for space.

“We suspected there would be a need with schools going remote and families forming these pods.”

Optima expects interest to come from the immediate area, including from parents who typically send their kids to the Montessori school in the tower, Burnham said.

Optima Signature’s furnished suites typically are used as co-working spaces by Optima Signature residents and other nearby workers and businesses. All but four of the suites are now leased, on six-month and one-year contracts, Burnham said.

The suites are on the second and seventh floors of the tower and range from five to seven desks.

The spaces, or those in other co-working facilities, won’t be affordable for many families. They cost US$1,800 to US$2,400 per month.

Optima is offering space only and the firm is not providing teachers or tutors to conduct classes.

Read the full feature on CTBUH

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Optima Brings Property Management In-House at Three Chicago Rentals

Development firm Optima, Inc. will lead property management and leasing services at three Chicagoland Class A rental buildings – its 490-unit Optima Signature mixed-use development in downtown Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood, the under-construction 198-unit Optima Lakeview in the North Side’s Lakeview neighborhood, and its upcoming 109-unit building in downtown Wilmette, IL, along the North Shore.

While Optima has served as the owner, architect, developer and general contractor for its properties in Chicago and Arizona for more than 40 years, the firm primarily focused its property management services at its Scottsdale, AZ rental communities.

“As we expand our portfolio in the Chicago area with two new luxury apartments in development, it is a natural progression to bring management in-house, enabling us to provide the same level of exceptional service we’ve perfected at our Arizona communities,” said David Hovey Jr., AIA, president and COO of Optima, Inc.

Read the full feature on Connect Media

Visit Optima Signature for more details

Masters of the Southwest: A Father-Son Duo is Redefining Sustainable Desert Living

On a sunny winter day, residents of Optima Kierland are pursuing their morning rituals—walking the dog, working out in the fitness room, running on a track around the rooftop pool, powering up a Zoom call in the lounge, heading to the underground garage for the commute to work. But the 1,000-unit condo and rental complex, spread across five towers, is not your typical brown-box-and-a-balcony multifamily project so prevalent around the Valley. Instead, it is a sustainable, architectural tour-de-force, balancing concrete and glass, shade and sunlight, voids and cubic forms, all cooled with lush plantings that defy boundaries between outside and in.

The project is one of the latest achievements by father-and-son architects David Hovey Sr. and David Hovey Jr., who, along with other family members, run Optima, headquartered in Scottsdale and Chicago. Known for their edgy, architecturally striking designs of multifamily complexes and innovative construction techniques and materials, the Hoveys—and their company—have found the secret sauce to success. Optima is a soup-to-nuts company that develops, designs, builds and manages projects, overseeing everything from site selection to specifying kitchen sink faucets.

“I’ve been a fan of the Hoveys’ architecture for a long time,” says architect Anthony Floyd, who heads Scottsdale’s green building program and has worked with the Hoveys on sustainability strategies for several of their projects. “They’ve changed how we view multifamily housing here. What they create is unlike what we’ve seen in Arizona—or even the world.”

The history of this modernist dynasty began with Hovey Sr. Born in New Zealand to a Kiwi mother and a U.S. Marine father, he moved with his family to Chicago when he was 15 years old. “Chicago is the foremost city in the world for modern architecture,” Hovey Sr. says. “Being there sparked my interest in architecture.”

Hovey Sr. enrolled in the Illinois Institute of Technology, where Mies van der Rohe had served as dean and shaped the school’s modernist bent. “Mies was no longer at IIT when I studied there,” he remembers, “but some of us went to his house one night and didn’t leave until 4 a.m. He lived in an old brick apartment—not one of his designs—because he didn’t want to be constantly accosted by clients.”

During college, Hovey Sr. worked as an assistant to the curator of contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago, igniting his love of modern art and inspiring his later work in metal sculpture. His first job out of school was with a small firm, but, wanting to experience a larger office, Hovey Sr. signed on with noted Chicago architect Helmut Jahn, working there for four years during the 1970s.  

“My son and I are contemporary architects. We are interested in the design, materials and technologies of the 21st century. We’re not interested in allusions to the past.”

David Hovey Sr., FAIA, architect

But there was always an itch to do his own thing. “My IIT professor, Arthur Takeuchi, always said that an architect was the low man on the totem pole when it came to projects,” Hovey Sr. recalls. “He said the best outcome was to be not only the designer but also the developer and client.”

Heeding those words, Hovey Sr. launched Optima in suburban Chicago in 1978, along with his wife, Eileen Sheehan Hovey, who handled the real estate component of their projects. Before long, they were specializing in design-driven multifamily complexes around the city and, later, joined by their children, Tara Hovey, who handles financial strategies for the company, and David Jr., who earned his master’s in architecture at his father’s alma mater and now serves as CEO.

Frequent winter visitors to Scottsdale, the family opened a second Optima office in the desert in the early 2000s, sensing a market that was open to innovative modernist housing. By then, Hovey Jr. was helping push forward Optima’s shape-shifting experimentations with design, materials and construction methods. “When I was working as a construction superintendent on our job sites,” says Hovey Jr., “I observed inefficiencies between architecture and construction that could be improved by prefabrication.”

Though they became known for apartments and condos, the father and son have long experimented with techniques and approaches by building single-family spec homes, completing several over the years in North Scottsdale. “We had to find a new language for architecture here in Arizona,” Hovey Sr. says. “Studying Frank Lloyd Wright’s shelters, we learned to design optimum structures in the desert, ones that celebrated the indoor-outdoor relationship and incorporated sustainable features, such as solar power and passive cooling. We took what we learned from these spec homes and translated that into our multifamily work.”

After completing their first Arizona project, the Biltmore Optima, the Hoveys wanted to include landscaped roofs and terraces for the next site, Optima Camelview. Hovey Jr. worked with ASU to study desert plants in terrace- and rooflike beds at a site in Glendale. “We looked at about 150 kinds of plants and trees,” Hovey Jr. notes. “We learned which survived in extreme sun or shaded spots and which didn’t.”

Optima Camelview, a condominium project, won accolades and awards for its—literal—green design of lushly landscaped terraces, as well as other sustainable strategies, such as shaded glass walls, underground parking and public open space. Optima Sonoran Village, rental apartments in downtown Scottsdale, followed, expanding on the design theme, as did the recently completed Optima Kierland. Under construction now is Optima McDowell Mountain, which will be a six-tower development of rental apartments and condos, mixing in street-level retail and even more amenities and green elements, such as rainwater harvesting, than the previous projects. 

As the Hoveys moved forward with projects, they developed relationships with core groups of craftspeople, such as Jerry Barnier, founder of Suntec Concrete. “We started working together about 15 years ago,” says Barnier, “and we found that the Hoveys are very receptive to pushing the design forward efficiently. They understand what works and what doesn’t when it comes to construction. They push everyone to do their best work.”

Despite recent pushback about high-density development in some parts of the Valley, the Hoveys are secure in their place in the desert’s urban landscape. “Having density and height on a site allows us to create open space that’s accessible to the public—and not just our building residents,” Hovey Sr. points out. “It also gives us room to have setbacks that are landscaped. Our McDowell Mountain project is planned around a central park open to everyone.”

Always looking for future possibilities, the father and son prefer to concentrate on one or two projects at a time. “Each development we do is a progression, a journey of how we envision people living in the 21st century.”

Optima Sonoran Village in downtown Scottsdale has five residential towers set around landscaped courtyards with views of Camelback Mountain. Each apartment has plant-fringed balconies that add to the greenscape.
A stint working at The Art Institute of Chicago sparked David Hovey Sr.’s love of contemporary art and his own work as a sculptor, including “Kiwi,” which graces an Optima project in Chicago.
Optima Kierland Center, the Hoveys’ most recent project, is a series of condo and  apartment dwellings offering luxe amenities, including cooling landscaping, rooftop pools and running tracks, a golf simulator and a dog “spa” for washing pooches.
In the heart of the Camelback Corridor, Biltmore Towers was the Hoveys’ first foray into the Arizona multifamily market and featured unique design elements, such as recessed balconies, red trellises and orange sunscreens.
Optima Verdana in suburban Chicago includes retail offerings at street level and apartments above.
The Camelview Village condo development put Optima on the local design radar, with innovations such as landscaped balconies and open space, as well as an edgy, modernist design. According to architect and Scottsdale’s green building head, Anthony Floyd, both David Hovey Sr. and David Hovey Jr. lived in units on site. “That’s what I call proof of concept,” says Floyd. “They could see what worked—and what didn’t.”
In downtown Chicago, Optima Signature and Chicago Center includes 42- and 57-story towers, with forms, details and colors inspired by Russian painter Kazimir Malevich and American artist Donald Judd.
Also in Chicago, the Lakeview project features indoor open space as a response to the climate.
“Curves and Voids,” a sculpture by David Hovey Sr., graces the gardens at Sonoran Village.

“Our single-family homes are experimental. They are our ‘Case Study’ projects from which we take ideas and apply them to our multifamily work.”

—David Hovey Sr., architect and Optima founder

Read more on Phoenix Home + Garden

Eco-Friendly Homes That Embrace The Earth Day Spirit

A cornerstone of community design at Optima Inc. is including green space to seamlessly connect residents to nature. Numerous studies suggest that contact to nature has positive effects for human physical and psychological well-being.

At Optima Kierland Center in Scottsdale, Arizona, a development of luxury rental and for-sale residences, residents have access to lush rooftop landscaping, an outdoor Zen garden and 5.5 acres of lushly landscaped courtyards with fountains.

A multiphase development project, each building within Optima Kierland Center is connected to the others through aesthetic structure and physical pathways amid lush gardens. Within the building, an innovative vertical planting system features self-containing irrigation and drainage, including vibrant and colorful planters at the edge of each floor. The system ultimately culminates into a beautiful rooftop garden.

At Optima Sonoran Village in Arizona, 60 percent of its grounds are open space that not only mediate the harsh desert climate but also create visually stunning landscaped areas to be enjoyed by residents and the community. A Kaleidoscope Juice Bar with patio seating is also on site.

In Chicago, luxury rental tower Optima Signature offers residents and the surrounding Streeterville neighborhood access to a tree-lined public plaza near its front entrance with a short walk to the lakefront and the Riverwalk.

Read the full feature on Forbes.

Visit Optima Kierland Center, Optima Sonoran Village and Optima Signature for more details.

Work wraps on new Montessori elementary school at Optima Signature in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood

Optima, Inc. has completed the buildout of Guidepost Montessori at Magnificent Mile’s new elementary school at Optima Signature, the firm’s mixed-use development at 220 E. Illinois Street in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood. Completed by Optima’s team in just three months, the new 14,000-square-foot elementary addition, which will serve grades 1 through 6, is now accepting registrations for in-person learning.

“As a vertically integrated firm, Optima was uniquely positioned to exceed construction timelines and deliver a new quality education choice in Streeterville at a time when so many parents need in-person alternatives to traditional schools,” said David Hovey Sr., CEO of Optima, Inc. and architect of Optima Signature.

The on-campus expansion comes on the heels of Optima, Inc. releasing four business suites at Optima Signature earlier this month to be used as pandemic learning pods, for both residents and nonresidents seeking home-based options due to the pandemic. According to Hovey, Guidepost Montessori has offered to work with families who use the pods if they need teachers, educational materials or supplemental learning programs as part of the school’s new Guidepost at Home program.

Read the full feature at RE Journals

Visit Optima Signature for more details

This Week’s Chicago Deal Sheet

THIS AND THAT

With people looking for more time to spend outdoors as soon as possible, some Chicago-area multifamily communities are bucking the tradition of opening outdoor pools on Memorial Day weekend — instead opting to open as early as mid-April.

Optima Signature in Streeterville officially opened its outdoor pool last week. Draper and Kramer, which owns and manages a number of downtown rental buildings, also opened in mid-April its outdoor pools at most of its Chicago-area properties, including Grand Plaza and Hubbard221. In addition, Related Midwest opened on April 16 its pools and outdoor recreational spaces at One Bennett Park, 500 Lake Shore Drive and Landmark West Loop.

Read the full feature on Bisnow

Visit Optima Signature for more information

Chicago apartments offer guest suites for rent

The living room of an apartment with big windows facing a skyline. the room has a couch facing a TV with tan chairs on the side.
A guest suite at Optima Signature. Photo: Courtesy of Optima, Inc.

If you want your mother-in-law close when she visits, but not actually in your house, a new apartment building guest suite may be the answer.

The big picture: On top of amenities like multiple pools, pickleball courts and planned events, some high-end apartment buildings in Chicago are luring in renters by offering on-site, fully furnished apartments that residents can rent for visiting friends and family.

State of play: Optima apartments in Streeterville, Wrigleyville and Wilmette have one- and two-bedroom apartments that are fully furnished with cooking supplies, cutlery, dishwashers and washers and dryers, making it more like an Airbnb.

  • Plus the building has multiple pools, hot tubs, gyms, saunas, pickleball courts and recreation areas.
  • And parking is included.
An indoor hot tub with an assisted chair machine above it next to an indoor pool.
The hot tub and indoor pool are available to guests. Photo: Carrie Shepherd/Axios

Between the lines: The arrangement could be especially appealing for international renters who have family visiting for long periods or new parents who want grandparents nearby (but don’t want to share a wall).

By the numbers: A two-bedroom is $375 on weeknights and $400 on weekends.

  • A one-bedroom is $325 on weeknights and $375 on weekends.

Reality check: Suites at the Fairmont from Thursday to Sunday range from about $285–$350 before taxes and parking, according to the hotel website.

The bottom line: On-site guest apartments may become another amenity buildings offer as the rental market heats up.

 

Read the full feature at Axios Chicago

Visit Optima Signature for more details

The Pandemic Is Changing How The Next Wave Of Apartment Amenities Will Be Designed

The coronavirus pandemic is forcing a rethinking of the multifamily amenities so important to attracting and keeping tenants in apartments over the last decade.

Some social distancing built into the design is going to need to be an option, though the exact nature of changes isn’t clear yet.

Tenants will expect changes, but not a decline in quality, Illinois-based Optima President and Principal Architect David Hovey Jr. said.  “We believe that residents will expect the full return of their amenities and services, but also changes to accommodate safe social distancing without sacrificing their experience,” Hovey Jr. said. One design strategy, at least for larger multifamily properties, will be to spread the amenities out. The 490-unit Optima Signature in Chicago, which was completed in 2017, offers 1.5 acres of amenities across four floors. That includes seven distinct fitness spaces with overflow areas, so there is space to spread out equipment and add sanitizing stations, Hovey Jr. said.

Read the full feature at Bisnow

Visit Optima Signature for more details

Optima Builds Out Montessori School at Streeterville Resi

Optima, Inc. completed the buildout of Guidepost Montessori at Magnificent Mile’s new elementary school at Optima Signature, the firm’s mixed-use development at 220 E. Illinois St. in Streeterville. Completed by Optima’s team in three months, the new 14,000-square-foot elementary addition, which will serve grades 1-6, is now accepting registrations for in-person learning.

“As a vertically integrated firm, Optima was uniquely positioned to exceed construction timelines and deliver a new quality education choice in Streeterville at a time when so many parents need in-person alternatives to traditional schools,” said David Hovey Sr., CEO of Optima, Inc. and architect of Optima Signature.

The elementary expansion features two new mixed-age learning environments with the capacity to eventually serve 80 students. At present, though, spots are limited as the network operates with smaller class sizes and heightened health and safety protocols due to COVID-19.

Read the full feature at Connect Media

Visit Optima Signature for more details

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