In this episode of the Alosant Innovator Series, host April LaMon chats with Monaca Onstad, President and CEO of OnPlace, a lifestyle consulting firm that helps builders and developers build better amenities for their residents.
They discuss the intentionality that she and her team use to design resident-centric amenities, her successful career in community lifestyle marketing and what she sees on the horizon for the industry.
Onstad has over a 20 years of experience in community lifestyle management and recently launched OnPlace in 2022, which combines her passion for lifestyle and community planning.
Here are some highlights from her conversation with LaMon:
Tell us a little more about OnPlace and the kind of work you are doing?
OnPlace helps design better spaces for target audiences now and into the future. Designing well means understanding the needs, wants, and nuanced behaviors of the target audience and then building spaces specifically for them. The work consists of understanding demographic and psychographic data and intentionally seeing the world from the shoppers’ and residents’ perspective. Not many are doing this now and I think we have a real opportunity to change the industry and make it feel more community-first.
What makes this intentionality behind lifestyle and amenity planning a competitive advantage for the community?
Now more than ever, community residents want to feel like they belong. The pandemic created a new view towards how we interact with where we live. Before the pandemic you might not have had a yoga class during the day, but now you do. Residents want to belong to their community and the lifestyle and marketing teams have opportunities to create a really rich experience by planning properly for their current and future residents and leveraging the right technology to communicate with them.
Communication is one of the biggest things we see in communities. Email is dead, and we need a way to reach residents with important information at the right time. Many of the communities we work with now leverage the Alosant ResX™ Platform to send residents communications through push notifications. The app can also be used for prospective home buyers, where communities are building relationships with potential residents before they buy a home.
Connect with Monaca
Connect with Monaca on LinkedIn
