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You'll find Starbucks coffee, iPads built into countertops and dog parks at Crescent Crosstown, but you won't see smokers lighting up cigarettes at the 25-acre retreat-style community.
Smoking isn't allowed indoors or outside at the newly built $37 million apartment complex near Interstate 75 and the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway in Brandon.
Crescent Communities LLC is at the forefront of what it expects to become a commercial real estate trend. All eight of its apartment communities under construction in the Southeast, including Crescent Bayshore in Tampa's Hyde Park, will be smoke-free, says Jay Curran, vice president of the Charlotte, N.C.-based company's multifamily group.
Crescent Crosstown is the developer's second smoke-free community locally. It built Carlyle at Crosstown, then called Circle at Crosstown, in 2009 as a smoke-free community.
That property, now owned by JMG Realty, remains smoke-free. Its website calls the complex “a new breed of apartment living that's nothing short of a breath of fresh air.”
Crescent's move to nix smoking will attract more tenants, those who want to live an active and healthy lifestyle, Curran says.
John Stone, managing director of the multifamily group at Colliers International, says it's unusual for an entire community in Florida to be smoke-free.
“If it's a trend here, it's a very big secret,” Stone says. “It sounds like a great marketing tool.”
Byron Moger, an executive director at Cushman & Wakefield, says, it's innovative on Crescent's part.
Stone's partner at Colliers, Nat Barganier, managing director of multifamily investment service, says the smoking ban sets Crescent apart from its competition.
Crescent is one of the more prominent commercial real estate developers in Tampa. Its developments include Westshore's Corporate Center office buildings at International Plaza and Hidden River Corporate Park near the Tampa campus of the University of South Florida.
Barganier expects others developers to follow Crescent's lead. But a smoke-free policy won't work at all multifamily developments, particularly those with older residents.
Crescent's newest Tampa project, Crescent Bayshore, expected to open next summer, will feature 367 units in three eight-story buildings, plus a nine-story parking garage.
It will not offer ash trays.
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