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Hospitality stands alone as the singular industry that truly understands people – and people are, of course, at the heart of design, architecture, and homebuilding. It’s often said that a builder can build the house, but the people make the home. Fully understanding people is what has given hospitality its edge, and why all of us get excited at the prospect of a weekend at an uber-luxe hotel. Imagine the feeling you get when you walk into a boutique hotel and everything is just right: the service, the scent, the arrangement of the furniture, and the upscale yet edgy décor. Then, picture when you head to your room from the lobby and the hallway feels welcoming and the art is perfectly proportional – the entry to your suite seems to pull you in with its warmth. It’s one of those things that you know when you feel it, and that will be the future of multifamily.
It’s what we strive for in multifamily, and when it comes to Caldwell, that vision became reality. Caldwell sits on the site of the former Spinney & Caldwell shoe factory in Downtown Lynn, Massachusetts. Located right at the MBTA Central Square station, it was a bold vision in a neglected Gateway City. The vision was the easy part – just 15 minutes on the train from Boston’s North Station, and with some of the North Shore’s best beaches a short walk away, we saw the opportunity for a real lifestyle community: a high rise multifamily building, with activated retail on the ground level, 259 apartments and 15,000 square feet of indoor and rooftop amenity space that would look, feel, and live like a boutique hotel – and would be certified LEED Platinum.
Designed by DMS Design with interiors by CUBE 3, Caldwell’s common spaces were built around the duality of old vs. new, speaking to both the gritty industrial revolution importance of this site and the new renaissance of Lynn, for which Caldwell is the vanguard. With the mandate that we wanted the building to be unique in its hospitality-driven design, the lobby has soaring 18’ ceilings, custom art in the seating areas, and lounge spaces reminiscent of an Autograph Collection hotel and not a tertiary-city apartment building. Caldwell’s residential hallways were the focus of much design attention, including getting the geometry, art, lighting, and wallcoverings to feel right. This was driven in part by the ownership team’s hospitality-driven experience and the desire for even the hallways to make residents feel like they were at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas.
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