Just when you wonder what Jeff Vinik will do for an encore, he doubles down.
That $1 billion “live, work, play” development around Amalie Arena is likely only phase one. If things pan out, Vinik sees “an opportunity for up to another billion dollars of development.”
But Vinik’s vision is about more than buildings, employees, synergy, sense of place and a-billion-here, a-billion-there wherewithal. There is also a literal health angle.
For that, he is formally partnering with Delos, a real estate company that builds health and wellness strategies into its projects. Call it Exhibit A for enlightened self interest.
This is well beyond the “new urbanism” walkability that is part of his master plan. This is about green space, low-pollen trees, acoustic-comfort facilitation and monitored air quality and light modification. It’s also about access to healthy foods. And it’s hardly happenstance that the WELLness priority is reinforced by the USF Morsani College of Medicine and the USF Health Heart Institute as pillars of this downtown community.
And this, to be sure, is definitely about marketing. When you announce your major investment in health- and wellness-focused technologies and design strategies in New York at the Clinton Global Initiative, you’re thinking big. When you get former President Bill Clinton to hype the effort as a blueprint for other cities to follow, you’re a major player with a leg up on the millennial market.
A healthy-by-design community is, as Vinik has acknowledged, a “major selling point.”
Indeed, healthy is also smart.