Sean McCorry has joined NELSON Worldwide as vice president, national business leader in the retail practice. He brings over 25 years of experience managing global retail concepts, where he previously served as director of global store environments for Timberland. 

Additionally, Maya Wahyudharma has joined the company as workplace and asset strategy regional practice leader. She brings over 20 years of experience in a variety of building typologies and training in architecture, interior design, and landscape.  

Read more with Interior Design here.

From retail destinations, office amenities, new services, and sustainable design, we’re seeing a surge in the desire to reconnect with the great outdoors across every consumer-facing environment. In our latest series, Our Return to the Great Outdoors we’ll share how brands can embrace this trend to create both safe and memorable outdoor experiences that will resonate with consumers long after COVID-19 fades.

In times of uncertainty, consumer expectations don’t change completely—they simply evolve, pivot, and accelerate, raising the bar and amplifying the demand for new, relevant experiences. A growing trend as consumers gravitate toward more convenient services, road and curbside experiences of all shapes and sizes are becoming more and more essential, especially as COVID-19 pushes brands to offer outdoor and contact-less services. In part two of this series we explore the experiences and services that keep people outside and on the road, in addition we’ll identify what brands are doing to bring this to the forefront of their experiences:

Drive-Thru Only

With a growing number of consumers ordering takeout instead of dining in due to COVID-19, restaurant and food brands have had to adapt to more efficient service models that support new consumer behaviors. Even before the pandemic, we saw an uptick in these convenience focused concepts, but today they have grown even more essential.

• Restaurant table reservation app Resy is hosting a 10-course drive-thru dinner experience in Hollywood, CA. Catered by these high-end chefs, the model could help bringing luxury dining back to life. Guests will be served food in single-use containers and be given a lap tray to keep. Each car will have its own designated waiter who will guide them through the courses.
  

  Resy Drive-Thru Experience | RESY

• At KFC’s first drive-thru only concept located in Australia, the goal was to develop a unique operating model that celebrated this change in consumer behavior and gravitation toward technology. The drive-thru has multiple lanes that allow customers to order and pay for a meal through the brand’s smartphone app or website, including designated lanes for more traditional, on-the-spot orders. Traditionally, the restaurant is the hero experience, but in this case, it’s the drive-thru. 

KFC Drive-Thru | NELSON Worldwide

Creative Curbside Pickup

With the rapid growth of e-commerce and a global pandemic causing retail developments to limit capacity or temporarily close, transforming underutilized space into creative pickup and return concepts is a clever and valuable way to meet consumer demands now and in the future:

• Adjusting to safety demands and new consumer behaviors, NELSON Worldwide explored the idea of creative click-and-collect concepts that could serve retailers and mixed-use developments. Along the way, we identified three ways these concepts can be activated and brought to life.

Click-and-Collect | NELSON Worldwide

• Looking to capture more off-premises business during and post-pandemic, Shake Shack announced plans to incorporate and add interior and exterior pickup windows to its stores. The new concept dubbed Shake Track is the start of a trend we will see implemented in restaurants and food concepts around the world.

Shake Track Pickup Window | Shake Shack

In-Car Entertainment

Seeking new ways to connect with their communities and enhance their lives post-pandemic, consumers have turned to new, COVID-safe ways to entertain themselves. As a result, an old pastime has resurged giving consumers socially distant options to enjoy themselves. Around the world, many variations of the classic drive-in movie experience has been reimagined: 

• This Halloween, Hulu is engaging fans and customers with a socially distant drive-thru and scary movie experience. Hulu is taking over the L.A. Equestrian Center for some spooky screenings ahead of Halloween where guests can drive thru a haunted forest of jump scares and spooky scenery called Huluween.

Huluween Drive-In Experience | Hulu

• The Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit in Toronto recently announced the world’s first drive-in art experience. Cleverly called, Gogh By Car, this new-age art experience is an immersive show of art, light, sound, movement, and imagination. The space can accommodate 14 vehicles per time slot and participants must park and turn off their engines to enjoy the 35-minute show from inside their cars.

Gogh By Car | Immersive Vincent Van Gogh Exhibit

Amenities have a profound effect on the value of a building, and new unique experiences make a lasting impression for consumers, employees, hotel guests, and residents. Our mixed-use teammates set out to explore current and future amenity trends in our latest blog series, The Amenity Effect. Follow along as we dive deep into the environments where we work, shop, live, and thrive and take a closer look at the amenities that help make these environments flourish.

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For years there has been a battle between multi-family and residential developers on who can offer the best of the best when it comes to amenities. While the competition is still strong today, many have realized there is a pendulum that swings and what was magnetic to tenants a few years ago, may not carry the same allure today. Adding more truth to this idea, the changes that 2020 has brought upon our lives has allowed us to recognize the importance of our human condition and evaluate the instinctual needs to strive for providing good design accommodation. Across the residential sector, there has been and will continue to be a desire for experiential amenities. Here are four trends we see quickly approaching:

Outdoor Connectivity

During COVID-19 we’ve seen many people seek work-life balance with the outdoors including walks, patio Zoom calls, and creative exercising. Connectivity to greenways, parks, and trails when available are perks for those seeking that balance.

Worthington Yards | Cleveland, OH

As the desire for outdoor wellness grows, many tenants will look for developments that feature exterior amenities. Rooftops, pools, fire pits, and grills will continue to be favorites and moving forward we will see a desire for larger green spaces that can be segmented into smaller group spaces for yoga, respite, work, and appropriate social gatherings. In addition to this, attention to pets and gardening have also up ticked. Amenities such as dog washing stations, pet friendly courtyards, trails, and sustainable gardening will see a higher demand; especially today as the pandemic has resulted in an increase of pet adoption and less trips to grocery stores.

DECA Camperdown | Greenville, SC

DECA Camperdown | Greenville, SC

Fitness 

Fitness is a very powerful cog in the amenity wheel, whether communal or in-unit. At home fitness has increased dramatically in the absence of gyms during COVID-19, but private fitness spaces and outdoor equipment are still elements potential tenants desire.

Another fitness focused amenity developers may consider is bike maintenance programming and storage spaces. To avoid mass transit and increase outdoor time, many people have turned to bikes for fitness and transportation leading to opportunities for an enriched experience in how we transport bikes within a property. 

DECA Camperdown | Greenville, SC

Coworking

Coworking spaces are a growing trend in multi-family residential environments that will continue to increase as businesses adopt more permanent work-from-home policies. Media and conference rooms, as seen in our DECA Campertown project, are popular along with a variety of space types that provide for a heightened way we can experience work without having to travel to the traditional office. Developers are also looking to allocate square footage within units for individual private workspace.

DECA Campertown | Greenville, SC

Community

Community is a big draw to multi-family and embracing the local context and history through brand and storytelling can reinforce the connection of street level amenities through branded storytelling. Restaurants, dry-cleaning, grocery, and other service retail help support residents as well as activate the ground floor. Designing the right mix and scale will allow fruitful and safe social engagement, while providing the comfort of home.

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“In these unprecedented times, where people are trying to maintain
a safe distance from one another, the human experience is still a social one.
By nature we crave a sense of togetherness and community.
Amenities help to provide an avenue to foster this need and can bring people together,
whether for work or play. It is our responsibility as architects and designers
to provide this environment in a safe, yet fun and exciting way.” 

-John Lewis | NELSON Worldwide Studio Director, Multifamily

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Adding a sense of community to a development can be done in many ways, but one way we see this being done is through partnership with local art organizations. By adding installations and galleries throughout the building, as seen at Worthington Yards in Cleveland, OH, tenants are inspired to celebrate the space, its art, and community around them. Layering on a programming element allows for refreshed curation of new work and resident participation to provide new experiences with this type of cultural amenity.

Enhancing the experience of parcel pickup will be important to bring these community needs to the residents. Thoughtful design toward cold storage should be considered for the future of grocery, restaurant, and pharmaceutical deliveries. 

Worthington Yards | Cleveland, OH

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“In today’s emerging generations and onset of wellness heightened by COVID-19,
amenities are a basic requirement. We need to be asking ourselves,
how can we make the gym, cafeteria, outdoor deck, and beyond better? 
We should be striving for ‘experiential’ design that takes these and turns
them up a notch to provide an experience.”

–Haril A. Pandya, FAIA LEED AP | NELSON Worldwide, Sr. VP/Managing Director, National Practice Leader

_______________________

The amenity effect for residential developments goes beyond making a desirable place to live. Providing elements of convenience, community, and wellness are tools that create an environment that allows people to thrive and build a new lifestyle. 

In 2021, VISUAL MERCHANDISING is following three distinct trends: immersive experiences, interrupting traffic patterns and connecting with the customer. When Men’s Warehouse approached Nelson Worldwide (Minneapolis) to reimagine the store, that’s exactly what they wanted to achieve.

“We were tasked with reinventing the way Men’s Warehouse is presented to shoppers,” explains Meredith Seeds, Director of Interior Design at Nelson Worldwide. “Previously, the product had been hard to shop with so many options, and the customer journey through the space was difficult to navigate. To create a store that offers intuitive and seamless shopping, we took a strategic approach: replanning and rethinking categories and creating spaces in which shoppers could celebrate moments that matter, like a suit fitting for their wedding.” Read more here.

Set in the epicenter of Atlanta’s historic stockyards and now-retired railway, Bellyard West Midtown Atlanta is the latest hospitality concept by global architecture, design and strategy firm NELSON Worldwide, and pays homage to the early 1900s, with thoughtfully designed moments that honor this time. Read more here.

This month, our latest healthcare project for Baptist Health South Florida, Fishermen’s Community Hospital, celebrated its grand opening during a ribbon-cutting ceremony on July 1st. Located in the heart of Florida Keys in Marathon, Florida, the new $43.7 million facility opened its doors four years after Hurricane Irma severely damaged the 60-year-old hospital’s original building, shutting it down permanently. In need of a critical access hospital, we were challenged to resurrect this important community resource. 

As a result, we developed a resilient design concept tailored to the hospital’s unique geographic risks, including a building envelope and hospital infrastructure designed to withstand Category 5 hurricane wind events and flood resistance features that exceed FEMA criteria. Built from the ground up, the new state-of-the-art hospital is designed to meet the needs of the community well into the future. The new facility includes an updated Emergency Center with an on-site helipad; inpatient and intensive care units, chemo infusion unit, outpatient laboratory, imaging services such as ultrasound, mammography, and CT scans. 

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The Anatomy of Design Changes to Maximize Wellness and Minimize Exposure in the Post-COVID World

Watch our latest webinar as Husch Blackwell and NELSON Worldwide take an in-depth look at the transition back into the workplace. Discussing legal, design, and wellness considerations to better adapt your office for the future.