Developer introduces new senior living model

After some five decades in real estate, mostly multifamily, Larry Lieberman thought he’d finally seen it all in the business.

'Sometimes you just have to shut up and listen to your people.’  Larry Lieberman, The Floridian Club

Then, in the planning stages of one of his latest residential projects, The Floridian Club of Sarasota, someone on his team suggested they turn a 200-square-foot room at the edge of the main clubhouse into a grooming station for resident’s dogs. Lieberman initially balked at the idea.

Turns out the pet spa has been one of the biggest hits of The Floridian, a 309-unit project of mostly villas in Venice, off Jacaranda Boulevard. Not only that, but in April, at the height of pandemic lockdowns, the community brought in a hairstylist, gave her a chair in the pet spa and provided free haircuts to residents. There was a line out the door — this time for shaggy humans. 

“That’s an example of one of the ideas I thought was a bad idea that turned into something good,” says Lieberman, 75, who notes he learns lessons on every project he’s ever done, going back to rehabbing apartment complexes in his native Ohio with his dad in the late 1960s. “Sometimes you just have to shut up and listen to your people.”

The Floridian Club is Lieberman listening not only to his people, but to years of his instincts in multifamily that residential living for the 55-and-up crowd doesn’t have to be binary: either monthly rents in transient apartment complexes or being locked into long-term mortgages and other commitments in continuing care communities or condo towers.

The Floridian, instead, is what Lieberman calls a reimagining of the active adult community concept. The model? Build high-touch, amenity-rich resort-style communities — “a place that would rival a country club,” says Lieberman, including full-time staff promoting a healthy and social lifestyle — occupied through annual and multi-year leases. No short-term rentals, no subleasing. And no mortgages that can, in a downturn, ruin retirees’ finances. The lease rate is locked in for two years, then capped for 10 years at no more than 4%, based on the Consumer Price Index. A big feature of the leases is a penalty free early exit-clause on the anniversary of the contract. “We’re not in the rental business,” Lieberman says. “We’re in the leasing-a-home business.”

And with the lease, stress Lieberman and his partners in the project, comes a neighborly community vibe fostered by The Floridian staff. It’s the type of place, Lieberman says, that brings to mind 1950s-style RV parks in Florida, where everyone knew everyone. “These aren’t your traditional garden–style apartments,” adds Fred Starling, a partner on the project whose Sarasota-based development and construction firm Starling Group built the Floridian. “It has more of a welcoming feel.”

Through early November, The Floridian Club of Sarasota in Venice, which opened in January, had leased about 60% of the units. (The community is split between 261 single-story villas and 48 units in elevator buildings at the front of the project. Residences are one or two bedrooms.) The pandemic has stunted the total volume of leases the community projected it would have 10 months in. But Lieberman says margins haven’t suffered — proving the model works on the developer side.  “We are ahead of where we budgeted in terms of lease rates,” he says. “The financial model is better than we anticipated.”  

‘Test tube’

Lieberman, through his Sarasota-based development firm the Barrington Group, along with Starling and one other partner, invested $65 million in The Floridian. The community includes a 10,000-square-foot clubhouse/amenity center, expansive lakes, fire pits on the deck and a large resort-style pool with a tiki bar.

The concept, after five years of research and studies into what seniors seek in a residence, is what The Floridian officials say is built for baby boomers by baby boomers. A second The Floridian-branded project is in the works, in Palmetto, north Manatee County, at Moccasin Wallow Road and Carter Road, a 306-unit community. That project is on its final site plan approval. “We wanted this to be a test tube,” Lieberman says, “to see what works and what doesn’t work.”

The pet spa is one example of what works. On the doesn’t-work side is a big-screen, high-tech golf simulator in the clubhouse that cost $100,000. “No one really uses it,” Lieberman says, and now it’s become a spot for residents to play video game tennis on the Wii.

In addition to building a neighborhood, not just connected villas, a big takeaway from the research Lieberman and his team conducted is residents want a sense of ownership — without a mortgage. “We learned our clients didn’t like condo living,” Lieberman says, that they didn’t want to be responsible for interior design and upkeep, but they did want something that could be their own. “The product has to be something that feels like a home — that’s very important. It has to be a home, not an apartment because you will stay longer if it’s yours.”

That’s why The Floridian provides interior repairs and maintenance, down to changing a light bulb or air filter. It also offers standard floor plans with a series of potential upgrades, on everything from closet shelving and plantation shutters to pull-down sun screens and slide-out shelves in the kitchen cabinets.

Customization, and being flexible to resident’s requests, when possible, is a key point for Lieberman. One example: While walking the pool area with a visitor recently, a resident, in a floatie in the shallow end, asked Lieberman about turning her villa’s garage into an office for her husband. She need the revised space because her husband is working from home in the pandemic. Lieberman said he would to talk to staff and look into it.        

Another selling point to The Floridian, for both the Venice and planned Palmetto community, say the developers, is location. Both are near Interstate 75 and close to retail, such as Publix and non-ecommerce entities. Starling looked at the Venice site for a different project several years ago, before being introduced to Lieberman through mutual friends. “I love that location,” Starling says. “That’s another factor that drew me to the project.”

Wide net

Even before the pandemic, Lieberman knew marketing, especially customer education on a new offering, would be a priority. They cast a wide net, including print and ads in the New York Times and AARP publications. Other marketing included phone calls and targeted email campaigns.

“Anytime you build something different people don’t know what it is and how to understand it,” Lieberman says. “People think it’s black or white, they never think anything is pink.”

The marketing, at least based on digital analytics, has worked: The Floridian website gets some 800 hits a day, and the sales and marketing team, says Lieberman, is diligent about tracking down every lead. But the pandemic —people in the Midwest, Northeast and in particular, Canada, aren’t able or willing to come down and see The Floridian in person — has stalled momentum. “People are saying gosh, ‘this is exactly what I want, but I can’t get down there right now,’ Lieberman says. “I believe there will be a lot of pent-up demand for this.”

In working to make that pent-up demand a reality, Lieberman can add The Floridian to a long career list of real estate accomplishments. Back in the 1970s the company Lieberman ran with his father, Richard, grew rapidly, mostly by taking over, rehabbing and managing distressed apartment communities in central and southern Ohio. Richard Lieberman sold his stake in the business to his son in 1977 and the company continued to grow quickly.

By the mid-1990’s the firm had acquired some 21 properties and managed about 8,000 units nationwide, with offices in Columbus, Ohio and Atlanta. In 1996 Lieberman moved to Sarasota, where he connected with some of the region’s most prolific developers and homebuilders, including Nate Benderson and Pat Neal. One of his first projects in the region was Savannah Preserve, a 90-unit condo community in east Manatee County. He’s held stakes in several other projects in the region as well, including a condo development in west Bradenton.

Lieberman’s biggest lesson in multifamily development in Florida, and elsewhere, is tired-but-true: a strong market eventually comes down, so always be prepared for it. “Apartment guys will always overbuild,” he says. “If you happen to be on the wrong end of the cycle, you are in trouble.”

Lieberman and Starling believe the cycle is just getting going on The Floridian and their lease concept. Starling says they are “keeping an open mind” to building more Floridians statewide after the Manatee County project, and expanding the brand. “We had an idea to do something never been done before,” says Lieberman. “I think there’s a really big market for this in Florida.”