Home is Where the Spa Is
Wellness is now the heart of new communities.
By Alec Scott
The ocean view at Canyon Ranch Miami Beach.
The rooftop garden at Miraval Living.
A condominium bathroom at Canyon Ranch.
Sunset on a townhome at Canyon Ranch Miami Beach.
Gertrude Stein once famously criticized her childhood hometown, Oakland, by saying, “There’s no there there.” Her throwaway line reflects a basic truth: Communities need a center—a place with some gravitational pull—to thrive. With more and more people wanting to incorporate the stress- and healthmanagement techniques promoted by spas into their daily routines, residential communities are now beginning to center on wellness as their gravitational pull.
In the past, many bought getaway properties at spafocused resorts in picturesque locations, say a second home at Red Mountain Spa in Ivins, Utah, or a Florida pied-à-terre at the Sanctuary South Beach. But the latest push is to live year-round with wellness part of the blueprint specs—often right in the dense urban areas where more and more of us live and work. “For years spas have been travel destinations, but now people want to be able to escape from their everyday stresses that way,” says Susie Ellis of Luxury SpaFinder.
The resulting complexes—spadominiums, as they’re known—are currently cropping up faster than stress disappears during a good foot massage. In 2004, the first year this spa-community trend blipped on the radar, 25 were slated for development in the US; by the end of 2007, there were an estimated 214 built or being constructed in America and a further 70 internationally.
which an in-house café can help residents stick to. Classes will range from yoga to sex therapy, and the on-site masseurs and acupuncturists, 20,000-square-foot rooftop garden and minimalist meditation room will also help inhabitants unwind after a busy Manhattan day. “We started in the city that needed stress relief the most,” explained Miraval CEO John Vanderslice recently when announcing plans to build similar developments in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Miami.
Founded by Dr. Kenneth Cooper, the father of aerobics in the 70s, Cooper Life at Craig Ranch near Dallas takes residents’ well-being a step further with a medical clinic. “Many but not all the people moving to these developments are [baby] boomers who want to stay active,” says Ellis about Cooper’s clinic. “They want an entry point into the health-care system, people they can talk to about how to stay healthy as well as to deal with health problems.”
Other wellness developments complement an emphasis on individual health with an effort not to damage the health of the environment. A spa-centered development of 230 environmentally friendly homes is currently planned for London’s formerly derelict Docklands. Gallions Park in the Albert Basin (near the site of the 2012 Summer Olympics) will primarily use a mix of wind, solar and thermal power as well as “biomass gasification”—converting garbage into energy. Not only does another such development, the Villages of Loreto Bay on Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, offer a full-service spa, it’s also cleaning up polluted nearby rivers, treating its own sewage and using only eco-friendly cleaning products and no pesticides.
The design in such places leans toward clean and contemporary, often with Asian accents and an emphasis on natural materials. Shawn Sullivan, a principal of the Rockwell Group, which designed Canyon Ranch Miami Beach, used pink coral native to South Florida: “We wanted to bring the beach into the complex, with the coral, pebble stones, water features and Italian glass tiles. We wanted a natural, light, clean palette.” People have enough complexity in their lives: Clean design helps promote a clutter-free mind.
Like village churches, these wellness facilities can fill multiple functions, serving as community centers, places to learn, to eat, to trade gossip, to meditate— places, above all, to retreat from the hurly-burly.
In the past, many bought getaway properties at spafocused resorts in picturesque locations, say a second home at Red Mountain Spa in Ivins, Utah, or a Florida pied-à-terre at the Sanctuary South Beach. But the latest push is to live year-round with wellness part of the blueprint specs—often right in the dense urban areas where more and more of us live and work. “For years spas have been travel destinations, but now people want to be able to escape from their everyday stresses that way,” says Susie Ellis of Luxury SpaFinder.
The resulting complexes—spadominiums, as they’re known—are currently cropping up faster than stress disappears during a good foot massage. In 2004, the first year this spa-community trend blipped on the radar, 25 were slated for development in the US; by the end of 2007, there were an estimated 214 built or being constructed in America and a further 70 internationally.
"We wanted to bring the beach into the complex." |
But we’ve moved on from simple spa communities— these aren’t just towers with saunas, saltwater pools and StairMasters. Scheduled for completion this summer, Miraval Living on New York’s Upper East Side will have a nutritionist on retainer to devise healthy eating regimes, |
Founded by Dr. Kenneth Cooper, the father of aerobics in the 70s, Cooper Life at Craig Ranch near Dallas takes residents’ well-being a step further with a medical clinic. “Many but not all the people moving to these developments are [baby] boomers who want to stay active,” says Ellis about Cooper’s clinic. “They want an entry point into the health-care system, people they can talk to about how to stay healthy as well as to deal with health problems.”
Other wellness developments complement an emphasis on individual health with an effort not to damage the health of the environment. A spa-centered development of 230 environmentally friendly homes is currently planned for London’s formerly derelict Docklands. Gallions Park in the Albert Basin (near the site of the 2012 Summer Olympics) will primarily use a mix of wind, solar and thermal power as well as “biomass gasification”—converting garbage into energy. Not only does another such development, the Villages of Loreto Bay on Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, offer a full-service spa, it’s also cleaning up polluted nearby rivers, treating its own sewage and using only eco-friendly cleaning products and no pesticides.
The design in such places leans toward clean and contemporary, often with Asian accents and an emphasis on natural materials. Shawn Sullivan, a principal of the Rockwell Group, which designed Canyon Ranch Miami Beach, used pink coral native to South Florida: “We wanted to bring the beach into the complex, with the coral, pebble stones, water features and Italian glass tiles. We wanted a natural, light, clean palette.” People have enough complexity in their lives: Clean design helps promote a clutter-free mind.
Like village churches, these wellness facilities can fill multiple functions, serving as community centers, places to learn, to eat, to trade gossip, to meditate— places, above all, to retreat from the hurly-burly.
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