Best Assisted Living Design Of 2024: Belmont Village’s ‘garden In The Sky’ 

Spanning an entire city block in Coral Gables, Florida, Belmont Village Coral Gables  balances social connectivity and modern style with connections to the outdoors and nature.

To Belmont Village CEO Patricia Will, the mixed-use project is a “garden in the sky” with 10 stories housing multiple landscaped terraces. The project’s design emphasizes resident health and wellness, including by improving indoor air quality and maximizing natural light.

“It’s magical,” Will said of the Coral Gables community. “If you were in a fine resort, you would not see something this nice. It’s better than anything that we envisioned and we’re bringing it to life.”

The community was constructed through a partnership between Belmont Village and Baptist Health, South Florida’s largest health care system. The Coral Gables project, which includes independent living and assisted living, marks Belmont Village’s second community in Florida.

The project planners’ innovative design within a mixed use retail area, along with the use of natural design elements throughout, won Coral Gables Belmont Village the top prize in the assisted living category of the 2024 Senior Housing News Architecture and Design Awards.

The concept

Planning for the Coral Gables project first started in 2018, when Belmont Village decided to grow its Florida presence after the success of its Fort Lauderdale community.

In 2019, Belmont Village inked a partnership with Baptist Health to offer physical therapy and primary care. At the time, Baptist was under contract to acquire a city block with plans to build a senior living community. To do that, it needed a senior living operator with a track record of quality management. Enter: Belmont Village. .

“They wanted to be the institutional investor in the project, not just a strategic partner for care delivery and innovation,” Will told SHN. “They wanted to be transparent and co-brand with us.”

To learn more about the operator, Baptist Health’s leaders  visited Belmont Village’s Mexico City community.Will noted the company’s ability to serve Spanish-speaking residents was an important advantage through the selection process.

With Belmont on board, the project team began design planning in 2020, with Corwil Architects on board as the architect of record. Like numerous other projects in recent years, the project ran into challenges and delays during the Covid-19 pandemic, delaying much progress until 2021, Will said.

The project planners navigated working with three different jurisdictions overseeing the site and were subject to various municipal, county and state regulations, further complicating the planning process.

Project planners designed the community to complement and fit in with  the Coral Gables area’s Mediterranean style 

The project team prioritized wellness and preventive health services in their design. Ground-floor amenities included a primary care space and pharmacy for residents, and project planners also designed the community to include a focus on resident health and wellness through the use of natural light and pretreated, filtered and conditioned air.

The project planners worked with ID & Design International to convey “contemporary interpretation of neo-classic luxury” in the community’s interior design.

The community’s ground floor was designed with a mix of spaces for Belmont Village residents and retail and commercial tenants. An important element of the project’s construction was a 6,000-square-foot pedestrian-friendly promenade with greenery and space to help foster random interactions among residents and strengthen social ties. The community was designed in the shape of an H and with a stepback that allowed more flexibility in adding greenspace to the campus. Will called the portion of the project a walkable streetscape.

Belmont Village Coral Gables is also built to withstand extreme weather given its location in hurricane-prone Florida. The concrete building is capable of withstanding winds of 175 miles per hour, with exterior windows built using an impact-resistant glaze. Project planners placed common areas on the community’s fifth floor or higher to account for potential extreme flooding, and the property is equipped with a backup generator.

With a main lobby on the fifth floor, the project team designed a concierge desk that welcomes people into the building on the ground floor. Project planners also added a great room with access to an outdoor dining bistro and bar area.

The community’s mixed-use components, including a Baptist Health primary care space on the ground floor and pharmacy, also posed a unique challenge, Will said.

“It had myriad uses that led to a fairly complex planning for all of these things,” Will said.

The construction

Construction permits cleared the way for a groundbreaking  in late 2021, with Moss Construction on board as the project’s builder. Construction took two years, partly due to lingering impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Some change orders and supply chain issues weighed down the project’s construction early on, and Will said the competition in the construction labor market had been “fierce” among other development projects in the area.

One of the project’s biggest challenges during construction was the coordination of how the mixed-use elements would be built, along with determining necessary placement of support columns and HVAC ventilation, Will said. Finding room for parking was also a challenge, and the planners built an above-grade parking structure to alleviate those challenges.

“You’re trying to maximize the best approach for everyone’s use,” Will said. “With half a city block, a large structure, and a lot of garage space, we needed to also create meaningful outdoor areas that serve residents while connecting with Coral Gables’ walkable, public spaces.”

Slight changes during construction included making resident units larger than originally planned with 200 apartments with demand for two-bedroom units being “off-the-charts,” Will said. A top-floor terrace and dog park were added during construction.

Ultimately, the project was completed one quarter behind its originally-planned opening date. The community was slightly over budget due to change orders and supply chain issues.

The completion

The Coral Gables project received its certificate of occupancy in December 2023, and the first residents settled in January of 2024. 

Current amenities at the property include a pool and sun deck, along with a nearby terrace and lounge area. Surrounding the pool is a full-service bar and bistro with an additional lounge dining area and barbecue kitchen. Other amenities include an art studio, sports lounge, screening room, salon, putting green, oversized chessboard, outdoor movie lawn, fitness center and library.

Popular locations for residents include the sports lounge and the gym area, along with the Baptist-operated rehabilitation clinic on the ground floor.

“It’s operating beautifully and the focus on preventative health care, nutrition is all over the DNA of the building,” Will said.

Will said the outdoor elements and landscaped terraces, along with the publicly-accessible paseo, have particularly helped bring the community to life since its opening.

“All of that outdoor space contributes and the vegetation that goes with contributes to an urban oasis on multiple levels,” Will said. “It’s spread on different floors in different ways and so that absolutely gets back to the integration of wellness.”

Occupancy for the community currently sits at 50% and Will said resident satisfaction is “very high,” citing a low number of move-outs since the community opened.

“We’re bringing the building alive with great leadership, both on the care side and on the hospitality side with a great staff,” Will said. “The team has brought the building to life in a way that is beyond what we intended.”

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