Expectations for a live-work-play lifestyle are surging as millennials and Generation Z now make up the biggest cohort of the U.S. workforce.
According to a 2025 JLL research report, two-thirds of people worldwide expect the places they spend their time to be highly amenitized, catering to their desire for personalized experiences. Sixty-nine percent of respondents were even willing to spend extra for it — up 4% from the year prior.
As a result, mixed-use properties are seeing an uptick in interest and investment activity. Over the next 15 years, office space in mixed-use developments is expected to make up nearly 30% of the entire U.S. office market. In 2025, this number stood at just 4%. Multifamily residences and retail spaces within these developments also command higher rent.
But as this asset class gains ground, properties in this sector need a clear strategy to differentiate themselves from the rest. This takes thoughtful curation, intentional placemaking and operational cohesion.
“[Mixed-use developments] are really seeing a shift from what was very much a transactional culture to one where you must be focused on elevating experience,” said Lela Cirjakovic, managing director, multifamily property management at JLL. “Where I think this begins is on the ground with our on-site teams. We're looking for those with high emotional intelligence and the willingness to serve clients.”
To dive deeper into how the hospitality mindset is shaping the next generation of mixed-used developments, Bisnow and JLL hosted a webinar on May 12. It featured these JLL leaders:
Below are the crucial strategies mixed-use owners and developers can implement to achieve their leasing and placemaking goals.
Brand Identity And Placemaking
Mixed-use developments present a unique opportunity to deliver value for all parties, from investors and ownership to tenants and consumers. But capitalizing on this opportunity by creating a destination that resonates with users is challenging. It requires thinking outside the box — and goes well beyond design and architecture.
Without a distinct identity and brand alignment, a development may face difficulties resonating with the market at-large. This could lead to inconsistent levels of service and fragmented marketing, activation and programming, all of which impact the end-user experience.
Sweeney said that’s why the importance of placemaking and programming cannot be understated.
“The bar is higher because the resident walking her dog in the morning, the shopper meeting her friend for lunch, the office tenant grabbing coffee all have to feel like they're in a place that was designed for them,” she said.
Programming at a mixed-use property should support its brand and audience strategy, Sweeney said. In today’s market, popular ways to bring communities together include events and pop-ups. Influencer marketing has exploded in recent years, and it can also drive engagement.
The key, however, is that no matter the type of programming an owner chooses, their strategy should reinforce “one brand, one voice” rather than feel disconnected, she said.
“Our approach to unified placemaking and marketing across an entire mixed-use property means one brand, one voice, one calendar and one metric to measure that across the entire property,” Sweeney said. “This structure aligns residents, hotel guests and office workers to create a favorable consumer experience and journey.”
Sweeney pointed to Halcyon in Alpharetta, Georgia, a $370M, 315-acre mixed-use development managed by JLL, as an example of what successful brand identity and placemaking look like.
The development features more than 500K SF of retail, office and commercial space, nearly 500 multifamily units, dozens of single-family homes and townhomes, and two hotels. Halcyon sees about 2 million visitors annually and is regarded as one of the Atlanta area’s premier mixed-use destinations.
This reputation didn’t happen overnight, however. Halcyon has become a success story because of its strategic programming, community culture and the everyday moments that make it feel alive, vibrant and distinct, Sweeney said.
“The mix of uses that have come into [Halcyon], the 300 events a year that are happening and the amazing green space in the middle of the property [that] has become the backyard for the community are making it a place that people want to stay in,” she said. “That is the definition of a successful property from our perspective, and that translates into things like extended dwell time. People are coming more frequently, and they're staying for longer.”
Operating As One Ecosystem
Chase said most mixed-use developments today are organized around achieving a particular tenant mix, not necessarily about the guest experience.
However, this norm is shifting in favor of hospitality-driven operations, as owners and operators realize that consumers are assessing these destinations through the lens of service and personalization.
“If you look at your most successful projects, they're more focused on creating an authentic experience,” Chase said. “Today’s shopper has options, and they're choosing to leave the house, so we have to do it differently.”
The proof is in the numbers. According to JLL’s Experience Matters research report, 73% of respondents preferred to shop at multipurpose destinations, while 60% said they preferred to return to familiar places. These figures showed that consumers’ commitment is not unconditional — emphasizing the importance of trust and consistency.
That’s why a strong operating strategy connects all of the moving pieces of the development so the end user experiences a unified place designed for their needs, Chase said.
McNamara said creating connections across all of the different verticals within a mixed-use development is crucial. There’s no room for siloed management.
“Silos, by their definition, create barriers, and they leave a lot on the table,” McNamara said. “[Mixed-use] properties have so much intrinsic value. If you’re operating in a silo, you may fail to drive cross-tenant opportunities, which can bleed into operational inefficiencies and cost implications.”
For example, inconsistent scheduling and programming across a property can lead to underutilized common areas and amenities, which can have an adverse impact on community culture. Suboptimal pricing and promotions across the property that fail to reflect real-time demand may negatively affect spending and engagement among residents and visitors alike, he said.
“[JLL's mixed-use team] is able to unlock these different components and look at the environment as one ecosystem where it accelerates the experience but also the financial returns for the investor,” Cirjakovic said. “When people are operating in silos, it creates complexity that absolutely does not have to exist.”
The importance of operating as one ecosystem is demonstrated at OCVibe, a $4B, 100-acre mixed-use development in Anaheim, California, McNamara said.
Surrounding Honda Center, an indoor sports arena home to the Anaheim Ducks, this development stretches far beyond a typical mixed-use project, both in terms of scale and amenities. It will feature dozens of restaurants, entertainment and nightlife venues, a 5,000-seat concert hall, 20 acres of outdoor space and more than 500 hotel rooms, as well as office and retail space.
To create and manage a development of this size requires what McNamara called "proportional equity deference” — or ensuring that respect and consideration are distributed proportionally across every retailer, operator and owner within the development.
“OCVibe is a great example of what I call ‘healthy-scared operations,’” he said. “You’ve got to wake up every day with a pit in your stomach and go, ‘How am I going to pull this off?’”
McNamara said that when JLL was brought in as the property’s management team, the developer asked how they could manage the dynamic demand curve across all the different uses. There is so much going on there all the time, that one day looks completely different from the next.
Aggregating all of the things that could be activated at one time, while also trying to build a team and operate this massive project in a way that shows deference to all of those different uses, can be a daunting task, he said.
“You have to come together in a way where you only show deference to the project and what you're trying to accomplish that day,” McNamara said. “Take that single pane of glass and focus all of those resources through that lens for that day. Even for a single day at a project like this, it’s so complex and needs to be designed and curated with the consumer experience in mind.”
Understanding The Profile Of The Resident, Customer
Owners and operators must understand audience personas, amenity preferences, lifestyle patterns and generational differences — particularly among millennials and Gen Z, Cirjakovic said.
“Our cohort is primarily millennials and Gen Z coming up very quickly,” she said. “The two combined are the largest rental cohort that we've ever experienced. But we're also seeing people give up their suburban homes to move into communities that fit their lifestyle and, in fact, elevate that lifestyle.”
Increasingly, these groups want to be in spaces they view as “extensions of their personal identity, values and aspirations,” with about 75% of people reporting a desire to visit brands that reflect them as a customer. This number is even higher among millennials at 79%.
This doesn’t only apply to the residential/retail portions of a mixed-use development. Approximately 74% of office workers in today’s market prefer to shop and socialize after work near their workplace.
It’s evident that people prefer a seamless customer experience from the second they arrive on property to the second they leave, McNamara said.
The Plaza Coral Gables in Coral Gables, Florida, is a well-densified and well-programmed development that understands and resonates with its community members, he said.
The Plaza Coral Gables, a $700M project completed in 2022, stretches across three city blocks and features Class-A office space, 174 luxury residences and the 4.5-star Loews Coral Gables Hotel. Built by Agave Holdings LLC, this development transformed a partially abandoned area of the city into one of the region’s hottest places to work, live and play, McNamara said.
“This is a place where the entire community was pretty hypersensitive to the development, and I didn't think it would ever get built in my lifetime, being from Miami,” he said.
McNamara said this is an affluent renter-by-choice community. Major companies have flagship locations or are headquartered at The Plaza Coral Gables, including Bacardi, H.I.G. Capital, Marriott International, Diageo and Apple, as well as regional family offices. Loews Coral Gables Hotel, he said, is a place not just for travelers but for locals to enjoy as well.
The ecosystem that's been created there is something special because it’s complementary to the Coral Gables atmosphere and community, McNamara said. It’s not an outlier that could damage the user experience.
“Coral Gables has a great, walkable downtown, but you don't actually have to leave the hotel to feel like you’ve just taken a vacation,” he said. “It’s become a place where Miamians come to meet and socialize with some of the most influential people. It truly is a place where people come to connect and create community, and to sometimes even do business.”
Without a solid understanding of who the development will, or should, cater to, the entire operational and management strategy can fracture.
“A person can come up to a property, and they get a feel for it the minute that they drive up to it,” Cirjakovic said. “They can quickly evaluate whether you're offering a sense of belonging and community, or if you're simply not.”
Data Informs Decision-Making
When trying to identify their customer base, create a brand identity or operate seamlessly, mixed-use owners or operators will often turn to data and analytics.
Data is abundantly available in all forms, Cirjakovic said, including resident feedback, surveys, transaction data, geofencing, retail performance or programming benchmarks. What matters most is not the amount of data but how that data is used to make informed operational decisions.
“Our approach is really all about having one metric to measure across the entire development,” Sweeney said. “How do we build programming that's going to resonate across all of them? Data is really the key to that.”
Sweeney added that data can sometimes be overwhelming, with operators and owners often having more data than they need to be successful. It’s really about figuring out how to cater to the kind of consumer they want to see at their development.
“We tailor our marketing strategies and our activation plans to speak to those specific audiences,” she said. “We talk about our most productive shoppers, and we now have the ability to dive into the data and really understand not just who's coming to the property but who's spending the most at the property, and really create tailored strategies to attract them.”
On the flip side, Sweeney said there’s also abundant data that shows which consumers are easily accessible but aren’t coming to the property as often as ownership and operators would like. As a result, she said her team then specifically tailors marketing campaigns to them to incentivize a visit to the property.
“There's so many ways that we can pull the lever, both with the data and then with the type of programming that we put together, to really speak to all of those audiences,” Sweeney said.
Along with Sweeney and Cirjakovic, Chase said “data is just data” — unless, of course, it can be turned into actionable insights.
But this is where many commercial real estate professionals can misstep, he said.
“The mistake I think we can get trapped into is taking that data, reporting it to ownership and then sticking it on a shelf,” Chase said. “A better approach is to have it become a living intelligence system that flows throughout leasing, programming, marketing and ops teams.”
Key metrics to watch include WiFi analytics, which Chase said are a great resource to see the zones in which people are shopping via the flow of mobile devices. Geofencing is improving, so owners and operators can find out where cross-visitation patterns are happening or where competitive leakage is occurring. Loyalty and transaction data is immensely insightful and has become more relevant in the decision-making process for mixed-use developments, he said.
“One of the benefits of JLL is that we’re so huge that we get to benchmark and see what's happening in different markets before it trends,” Chase said. “There's so much research out there. You can get lost in the data, but being able to use it effectively helps you get that one extra deal that takes your [mixed-use] project in the right direction.”
This article was produced in collaboration between JLL and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.
Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.
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