Summer means something different depending on where you spend it. In Chicago, it is the season residents wait for through a long winter: the months when the lakefront fills up, the windows stay open, and the parts of a building that went quiet in the cold come back into daily use. In Scottsdale, summer is the season to work around. The heat sets the schedule, and life shifts toward the cooler hours at either end of the day, with the middle reserved for shade and the indoors.

Optima designs, builds, and operates its communities, so the way each one meets its season is deliberate rather than incidental. The planted terraces, the integration of indoor and outdoor space, and the amenity floors set throughout the building are all drawn for the climate they sit in.

Summer in Chicago

In Chicago and the North Shore, summer is when the outdoor spaces do most of the work. The flowers bloom, the sky decks open, and the rooftop that felt exposed in January becomes the most used space in the building. Evenings stretch late, so residents drift outside after work: dinner on a terrace, a swim before the sun goes down, an easy walk to the water. The floor-to-ceiling glass that keeps the interiors bright all year now opens onto a season that rewards being outside.

Summer in Scottsdale

In Scottsdale, the rhythm runs the other way. The hottest stretch of the year pulls activity indoors and toward the edges of the day. Mornings begin early, before the heat sets in, which is when the pools and the shaded paths get used. By midday the interior amenities take over: the fitness centers, the lap pools, and the cooled lounges. The architecture does steady, quiet work through all of it. The vertical landscaping that wraps the buildings and the deep terraces keep direct sun off the glass, so the interiors stay comfortable without leaning as hard on the cooling system. Life moves back outdoors in the evening, once the heat lifts.

Built for the place

What the two regions share is an approach. Each Optima community is conceived as a complete environment rather than a building with amenities attached, and that environment is tuned into where it stands. In Chicago that means spaces that open outward and make the most of a short season. In Scottsdale it means spaces that hold their comfort through a long summer. The same design thinking sits behind both, carried from the drawing through to the way the building is run.

Explore our communities across Chicago and Scottsdale to see how this approach carries from one place to the next.