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Inside The Newest Tower at Optima Kierland Apartments: A Closer Look at the New and Evolving Amenities With Barbie Clemons

Get ready to experience the ultimate luxury apartment living! The long-awaited completion of 7190 Optima Kierland Apartments in Scottsdale has finally arrived, and we’re thrilled to give you an exclusive look into all of its evolving amenities. We sat down with Barbie Clemons, General Manager at Optima Kierland Apartments, who shared all the details about what makes the tower’s incredible new amenities stand out from the rest:

What is the current state of the luxury amenity experience in Scottsdale? How has the definition of luxury amenities changed in recent years? 

Everybody’s spending a lot more time on amenities. You can see it in Scottsdale being a resort town; people want that resort-style living and to have everything at their fingertips. In recent years, we’ve seen buildings adding more events to their rosters, making sure that they have a gym, pools, hot tubs, etc. And then you start seeing other communities sprinkling in a cardio room and some of those more niche amenities to set them apart. For example, there’s a brand new building up the street from us that has a spa atmosphere where they’ve built a massage room and some of those spa-like amenities.

But that’s something that Optima has always done, because we’ve always gone to the next level with our amenities. This gives us the unique opportunity to always be ahead of the curve, delivering experiences and features that residents are just starting to dream about!

What are residents/potential residents at 7190 most interested in? 

At our new tower, Kierland 7190, we added a separate pickleball court. People are very excited about this addition because pickleball is such a phenomenon. In our other Kierland properties, we’ve transformed our basketball courts so residents can play basketball or pickleball. But in 7190, we now have a separate space that’s specifically for pickleball, and people are so excited about that.

They’re also excited about the Olympic-length pool on our rooftop here. It’s probably the longest pool I’ve ever seen on a rooftop, and it’s absolutely beautiful. Something else that has drawn people into our newer buildings is the rooftop track. We have a quarter-mile track that goes around the roof of our buildings, where residents can walk or jog and enjoy the views of McDowell Mountain, as well as a spa and cold plunge, and like our other buildings, lounge seating, fire pits, and an outdoor bar and kitchen. 

7190 Optima Kierland Apartments’ outdoor covered Pickleball arena

What are some of Optima Kierland 7190’s evolved amenities? 

There are so many! The rooftop track is a newer one, and the Olympic-length pool on the rooftop and pickleball court are some of the others. We also have a yoga studio that includes its own separate Pilates room. We’ve added full-blown pet spas and one of our most fun new additions, a golf experience. We also have our golf simulator and sports lounge indoors, and then outside, we have a new putting green and chipping area where residents can play on different types of terrain, which is unique.

What sets these amenities apart from other buildings in the community? 

Kierland stands apart because each of our five buildings has its own set of amenities, which is so distinctive relative to other apartment communities where the amenities are centralized and shared by all of the residential buildings. So whichever Kierland tower you choose, you’re only sharing with the intimate community you’re already familiar with. It’s really a lifestyle that we sell here, not apartment living. We’re showing residents that they can have everything at their fingertips and not have to go to a Lifetime Fitness or something like that outside of our community if they don’t want to, we’ll bring it all to them.

How are your residents responding to the amenity experience at 7190?

What we’re hearing from residents is that they are genuinely excited about the fact that they don’t have to leave the community to have an amazing quality of life. Our residents don’t have to go to cryotherapy or visit another golfing place to play on a simulator. Everything is right here within easy reach. We also have everything from huddle rooms to conference rooms, making it extremely easy for residents to work from home. We have spaces to enjoy and activities for people to play, from racquetball and pickleball to our pool, ping pong, shuffleboard, and bocce ball. I mean, there’s something for every single person in these buildings.

If residents are retiring, selling their homes, and downsizing into apartment living for the first time in 30 years, their grandkids are going to have a ton of places to go and enjoy. Additionally, new to the 7190 tower, we have implemented a 24/7 door staff so residents will have someone available 24 hours a day as part of our staff!

Trending Now: A Brief History of Ping-Pong

If you’re unsure how to spend an open afternoon or a few hours of free time, look no further than an Optima® community! Ping-pong is just one of the many entertaining activities included in each of our multi-family developments. And while you might remember playing the lively game as a kid, what you might not know is its rich history. Today, we’re exploring the ever-evolving story of ping-pong.

The popular pastime of ping-pong that we know today arose in England in the late 19th century. At the time, it was more widely known as table tennis. The fast-paced game originated in Victorian England as an adaptation of the popular lawn tennis game to transfer the activity inside for the cold winter. And unlike the simple ball and paddle used today, participants in the game’s early years would get creative with their equipment, regularly using champagne corks as the ball, cigar boxes as the paddle and books as the net. 

However, it wasn’t until 1890 that the pastime enjoyed by the wealthy class of England attracted a greater appeal when David Foster patented the first table tennis-style game. It quickly became a favorite across Europe, and Hungary held the first national championship in 1897. During this time, the game became termed ‘ping-pong’, originating from the onomatopoeic sound of the bat striking the ball and the ball hitting the table. 

The Optima Lakeview® game room, featuring a ping-pong table

While the sport slowed down in the early 20th century due to a lack of governance, it experienced a revival in the 1920s following the founding of the International Federation of Table Tennis and its first-ever world championships. After the game equipment transitioned from a hard bat to a sponge bat in the mid-20th century, elite players from Japan and China helped to revive interest in the sport once again. Concurrently, ping-pong diplomacy advanced, contributing to enhanced relationships with Eastern and Western nations. 

While many don’t know the rich history behind the sport today, ping-pong’s dominant presence across the world remains. Seoul, South Korea, was the city to first introduce ping-pong to the Olympics in 1988, and following that, the activity gradually turned professional in the 1990s. Today, it remains the most practiced sport in China and an integral part of the country’s culture.  

A semi final ping-pong match between Chin and Korea at the 2012 London Olympics

Ping-pong’s attraction is rooted in more than its entertainment value, as it’s known to boost the health of both the body and the mind. Everything from the speed to the ball placement is crucial in the game, which is why routine players are highly skilled in creative and critical thinking. The fast back and forths and short distance nature of the sport also help with improved flexibility, hand-eye coordination and balance over time. 

Constantly bringing together people from different walks of life, the game of ping-pong embodies our commitment to connection and wellness within each of our communities.

Curated Furniture at Optima Lakeview: the Bertoia Side Chair

Our love of mid-century classic furniture can be found throughout all of the Optima communities. And with our soft spot for iconic seating, it’s no surprise that the famed Bertoia Side Chair is a staple in many of our amenity spaces. Let’s take a closer look.

About Harry Bertoia
Born in San Lorenzo, Italy in 1915, Bertoia built an international reputation as an artist, sound art sculptor and modern furniture designer. After leaving his home at the age of 15 to join his older brother Oreste in Detroit, Harry embarked on a career that centered on the exploration of modernist ideas and ideals, often in collaboration with some of the greatest thinkers and visionaries of that era.

In 1936, a one-year scholarship to the School of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts allowed Harry to study painting and drawing. He entered and placed in many local art competitions, said to be the most awarded student up until that time. The following year, another scholarship took him to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Working among some of the most famous artists and designers of the modernist age, including Eero and Eliel Saarinen, Charles and Roy Eames and Florence Knoll, Bertoia’s creativity and mastery of materials flourished.

Bertoia as Furniture Designer
Bertoia was first exposed to furniture design at Cranbrook when Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames entered and won the Organic Furniture Design Competition sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art. In fact, Bertoia developed his initial chair design ideas while working with Charles Eames and others in California in the late 1940s, which he later incorporated into his work.

Bertoia eventually left Eames to join the Point Loma Naval Electronics Laboratory. While there, he learned how to study the human body to design control panels and knobs that focused on comfort for reach and grip. This sensitivity to ergonomics contributed significantly to Bertoia’s fascination with designing well-fitting practical chairs.

In 1950, at the invitation of former classmate Florence Knoll and her husband Hans, Harry moved to eastern Pennsylvania to work at their emergent furniture company Knoll, Inc. Florence had seen Harry’s work at Cranbrook, heard he had left Eames, and knew that he had enormous promise as a furniture designer. The Knolls offered him the opportunity to design what he wished with full credit and complete recognition of his work, which was their policy with all designers.

About the Bertoia Side Chair
Once on staff at Knoll, Bertoia was asked to develop hospital furniture, but he preferred to work with healthy bodies. He gravitated towards metal as his material of choice, and he continued to experiment with it until he landed on the concept of the wire grid, which could be shaped at will. with it until arising at the wire grid concept that could be shaped at will to conform to the human body. This was a radical departure from the use of rigid wood, which was characteristic of the late 1940s and early 1950s furniture. He not only created the airy welded metal design of the chairs, but also devised the production molds used for mass manufacture. 

Knoll produced the first Bertoia chairs in 1952 — an amazing collection of furniture that reflects a profoundly beautiful study in space, form and function. As with other designers of his time, including Mies van der Rohe, Bertoia found infinite elegance in an industrial material, elevating it beyond its utility into a work of art. 

Today, the Bertoia collection remains one of the great achievements of mid-century modern furniture design by one of the master sculptors of the last century and a proud part of the Knoll heritage.

Pickleball 101

With lifestyle integral to condominium and apartment living, at Optima we love to amp up our amenities to the next level. We’re always on the lookout for cutting edge trends and amenities that will cater to our residents’ lifestyles and interests. So when we noticed the increasing popularity of pickleball in the southwest, we happily adapted to incorporate an indoor pickleball court at our latest project, 7180 Optima Kierland. For those that aren’t familiar with the sport, here’s a little pickleball 101:

Pickleball 101

Visually, pickleball appears quite similar to tennis. Played on a badminton-sized court with a modified tennis net, the sport is a combination of many elements of tennis, badminton and ping-pong. Players use a paddle and a plastic ball with holes, and can choose to play as singles or doubles. Originally, pickleball paddles were made with wood, but have evolved as the sport has gained popularity to be made primarily of lightweight composite materials such as aluminum and graphite. As for the holey ball, holes number 26-40 and the ball can come in a variety of colors but must be solid to meet official international specifications.

Playing Pickleball

In gameplay, the ball is served with an underarm stroke below waist level in an upward arc aimed diagonally. Initially, only the serving side may score a point. A point is earned when one side commits an infringement of the rules, or a fault. Faults include not hitting in the opponent’s diagonal court, not hitting beyond the net, not hitting the ball before the second bounce, hitting the ball out of bounds, among others. Serving alternates players, and points can be scored equally throughout the remainder of gameplay. Watch a full video tutorial on playing pickleball here.

A Brief History of Pickleball

Why call it pickleball? It goes without saying that no pickles are actually involved in the sport. Originating in 1965 on Bainbridge Island, pickleball was the DIY invention of three dads attempting to reinvigorate summertime activities but lacking in proper supplies. The three dads, Joel Pritchard, Bill Bell, and Barney McCallum, claim two separate origin stories for the sport’s name. According to Pritchard’s wife, it was named after pickleboats. According to McCallum, the Pirchards had a dog named Pickles, who would chase after the ball, and served as inspiration for the new game’s name. 

Pickleball is truly a sport for everyone, and we hope to cultivate new pickleball fanatics in our communities with the unique amenity.

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Maintenance Supervisor

Glencoe, IL





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