South Beach Condo Complex Adds 29-Foot LED Wall … To Parking Garage Lobby

May 26, 2020 by Dave Haynes

This is a 29 foot wide by 7 foot high direct view LED video wall in the waiting area of a parking garage of a luxury condo complex in the South Beach section of Miami Beach.

Yeah, the area where you wait for an Uber, Lyft or taxi.

The video wall is one component of a $300 million facelift at the complex. Says a case study from Samsung, whose Prismview division supplied the wall:

For Aimco, the Denver-based firm that manages the Flamingo, standing out came down to delivering a bolder, more modern and imaginative experience for residents. It was all about thinking creatively. “Our goal was to create a safe, dedicated space that offers guests and residents the dynamism and excitement of design as well as live music and sound,” said Kelly Nagel, Regional VP at Aimco.

With a sizeable art budget built into the project, they enlisted designer Annhy Shim-Morel to lead the look and feel of the renovation. 

“Annhy had a vision for the huge video wall,” says Rob Warfield, Southwest Channel Manager for Samsung, the Samsung company that Aimco enlisted to design and deliver the display. “People come down the elevator at the Flamingo, step outside, and sit on benches to wait for their rides. She came to us and said “how do we make that area pop?”

Shim and the Samsung team went back and forth, considering every possibility from size options to indoor and outdoor displays. Warfield and his colleagues carefully explained product advantages and differences, ranging from pixel pitch to how the displays would react to the salt air and proximity to the ocean. 

I have seen this sort of thing going, increasingly, into the lobbies of office towers as a tenant attraction and retention tool. COVID-19 has cleared out many commercial office towers, and one has to wonder if the experience with Work From Home means the owners of these properties will have to work even harder to attract and retain tenants.

So maybe video walls will help, but maybe they money won’t be there as lease rates get forced down.

A high-end condo is not susceptible in the same way, though I suspect that with millions of people out of work, there are units in every condo block out there that will be up for sale, as owners realize they can’t make payments.