“When we started with the Giarratana Team on the Alcove design, Tony Giarratana was clear that they had always seen multifamily technology as an obstacle to tenant satisfaction,” Ezold says.

The client previously managed a variety of security systems that made it difficult to fully visualize the entire property.

Bala began by focusing on the smarthome aspect, as that would determine which security technologies could be utilized.

“We presented multiple options for tenant access and put together storyboards for each user type in the building along with videos and renderings of what tenant access would feel like at each major touchpoint — front door, elevator door, unit door,” Ezold says.

Both buildings reside in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. Being adjacent to new city developments including shopping, nightlife, hotels and new office spaces created a challenge to safely manage high levels of foot traffic while also meeting the needs of the residents.

“We also had to look at these properties as a single managed group with parking shared between the two properties,” Ezold says. “We favored a hybrid cloud and on-premise approach to help reduce offsite cloud costs but allow for remote management by a small team of both properties as well as future buildings that are under construction now.”

Residential properties come with their own challenges, as any technology needs to be accessible to the general public. An electronic key service for an apartment complex needs to be easy to use for residents with a wide range of technology experience. In addition, there’s the concern of balancing security with resident’s comfort. Tenants want to feel safe without feeling like they’re constantly under surveillance, especially in their living space. Therefore, tenant privacy is of its utmost importance.

“Our goal was to limit the total number of apps a tenant needed to interact with the property and we kept a running app count through each design iteration,” Ezold says. “We focused on solutions that would be interoperable with a single smarthome head-end with the goal that the tenants could navigate from curb to couch without changing credentials. And when we thought we had the right solution, we presented it to the Giarratana leasing team to get their input and make adjustments. Thinking of security as part of a product being sold to tenants, as well as a factor in tenant retention, put the onus back on our team to design a solution that would stand up to tenant expectations.”

A year post-integration, Ezold shares an important lesson learned from the project. Vulnerabilities exposed during the rollout to tenants have been managed, and Bala is working with Giarratana on another multifamily property in the same location.