Miami to Become Home to World's First Blue Zones Center
Blue Zones and Adventist Health have partnered with RPC’s Legacy Hotel & Residences to open the first flagship well-being and medical facility built on the Blue Zones research, standards and principles and Adventist Health’s 150-year well-being heritage.
Miami (August 19, 2021) – Downtown Miami’s highly anticipated mixed-use development, Legacy Hotel & Residences, today signed a record-breaking joint venture deal with Adventist Health called Blue Legacy Ventures (JV). The JV will lease and operate a first of its kind 120,000-square-foot health and well-being center. As one of the largest commercial leases to be executed in Downtown Miami’s history, the JV officially marks Adventist Health’s and its subsidiary Blue Zones’ next chapter in putting their longevity principles into practice via this first flagship center for well-being. The services will include diagnostic, surgical, medical, spa, fitness, lifestyle medicine and well-being improvement programming. The estimated $100 million, 10-floor center reflects all the parties’ shared vision to make Miami Worldcenter in Downtown Miami, and eventually Miami as a whole, the next Blue Zones community.
California-based Adventist Health acquired Blue Zones in 2020 as a key step forward in their commitment to leading a 21st century well-being transformation movement that is rooted in their 150-year well-being heritage. The nonprofit integrated health system serves more than 80 communities on the West Coast and Hawaii through hospitals, medical clinics, payer partnerships and other care, health and well-being services. Blue Zones has a proven, research-based solution to improving well-being of entire communities by making healthy choices easier in all the places people live, work, learn, pray and play. The company was born out of explorations and research done by National Geographic Fellow and Blue Zones founder Dan Buettner, who identified the blue zones hotspots around the world where people live extraordinarily long and happy lives. Blue Zones is recognized as the proven global leader in applying this research to transform entire populations by empowering people to live longer, healthier, happier lives, resulting in double digit drops in obesity and smoking rates, increases in activity and happiness, lowered healthcare costs and more.
The JV will merge the best practices of hospitality and healthcare by leveraging RPC’s expertise in developing visionary properties with Adventist Health’s expertise in lifestyle medicine and Blue Zones’ experience in improving well-being by design. The Blue Zones Center will be the first place, built from the ground up, with a fully integrated well-being and medical center that focuses on keeping people well. At the integrated well-being and medical center, guests will have the ability to benefit from a lifestyle approach to medicine and an evidence-based approach to well-being therapies and treatments.
Lifestyle medicine has emerged as the future of healthcare, and with the new medical facility, the JV will pioneer building a large-scale lifestyle medicine center from the ground up. The Blue Zones experience at Legacy will combine modern medicine, holistic healing, and the most sophisticated artificial intelligence and technology for members, guests, visitors, residents and employees to live better, longer. The Blue Zones Center’s membership model will offer high-touch, frequent interactions and deeply rooted health relationships with patients, members, residents and visitors.
Blue Zones takes a systems-focused approach to designing places and spaces that improve the comprehensive health and well-being for everyone that moves through them—from the patient to the family to the front desk hotel employee. There will be a unified approach to materials used, foods offered, physical designs implemented, storytelling, policies and programming—all designed to deepen and enrich the guest experience and create the optimal environment for higher well-being.
Everyone can expect a fully immersive Blue Zones experience as they visit the Legacy Hotel & Residences where the healthy choice is the easy choice, from the building design encouraging moving naturally to the Blue Zones menus in onsite restaurants encouraging eating wisely, to the policies and programming encouraging people to connect more with each other and their purpose.
Blue Zones programming will also benefit the wider Miami community, including an onsite farmers market, a curated voluntourism program, movement activation in downtown Miami’s planned 80-acre park system as well as the creation of the Blue Zones interactive Exploratorium.
“Blue Zones has captured the imagination and attention of people all over the world for being a pioneer in improving the health of entire cities and helping us all get the most out of our years,” said Developer Dan Kodsi, Founder and CEO of RPC. “Now with The Blue Zones Center, their proven principles will come alive as hotel visitors will actually be able to see, touch, and live the Blue Zones lifestyle themselves for the very first time.”
“This will be a more advanced way of addressing health, where the patient’s journey begins with a highly personalized medical evaluation by your physician, followed by a unique and customized high-tech and high-touch program that utilizes all of the services within the center, including surgical, aesthetic, therapeutic, consultative, lifestyle coaching, well-being programming and more to keep people well and happy,” said Stephen Watson, Managing Partner of RPC Health, who envisioned and lead the development of the center. “We believe this combination of advanced diagnostics with lifestyle medicine and unparalleled personalized care will help members reach and sustain their optimal health.”
“The value proposition of the Blue Zones Center is to generate better performance and more good years. Embarking on a trailblazing project like this requires the right partners, and we’re impressed with the RPC leadership and team, who have been committed to co-innovating with us on this visionary project. The JV leverages our joint capabilities and competencies to combine our transformative model for creating optimal well-being with RPC’s expertise in forward-thinking development and placemaking,” said Ben Leedle, CEO of Blue Zones.”
“Creating the first Blue Zones Center and integrated large-scale lifestyle medicine center marks our commitment to move beyond sick care,” said Bill Wing, President, Adventist Health. “It will also establish a model and lead the way to the fusion of care, health and well-being.”
About RPC
Daniel Kodsi is a real estate veteran and CEO of RPC, a leading real estate development firm with more than 40 years of history. Established in the 1970s, RPC has developed over 6,000 residences across mixed-use, master-planned communities, hotels, multi-family, and high-rise residential projects exceeding more than $3.5 billion in asset value with over $2 billion in the pipeline. Under Daniel Kodsi’s leadership, the company has developed and repositioned more than 50 projects and delivers a proven track record of identifying underserved market opportunities and executing complex large-scale projects. With its visionary leadership, deep market insight and data driven analytics; RPC’s developments are considered a combination of exceptional design, cutting-edge execution, and luxurious amenities that elevate the lifestyle of residents, guests and communities while generating value for both private and institutional investors.
About Legacy Hotel & Residences
Downtown Miami’s newest mixed-use tower, Legacy Hotel & Residences, is a branded skyscraper in the heart of mega-project Miami Worldcenter (MWC) by RPC developer Dan Kodsi. The neo-futurism-inspired tower features 274 branded residences sitting atop a 219-room hotel, including ground-floor retail, and will feature one-of-a-kind amenities that include the city’s first enclosed rooftop atrium taking up the top seven floors of the tower with a members-only international business lounge; a dramatic cantilevered, Singapore-inspired pool, downtown’s largest pool deck set on one acre and a first-of-its-kind medical and wellness center. Legacy’s microLUXE residences range from 400 square feet to 949 square feet with studios and two-bedroom units, offering the functionality of a micro-style home with the high-quality design and superior finishes of an elite condominium.
About Blue Zones®
Blue Zones employs evidence-based ways to help people live longer, better. The company’s work is rooted in explorations and research done by National Geographic Fellow Dan Buettner, who identified the blue zones regions around the world where people live extraordinarily long and happy lives. The original research and findings were released in Buettner’s bestselling books The Blue Zones Solution, The Blue Zones of Happiness, The Blue Zones, Thrive, and Blue Zones Kitchen—all published by National Geographic books. Using original Blue Zones research, Blue Zones Project® works with cities to make healthy choices easier through permanent and semi-permanent changes to a city’s man-made surroundings. Participating communities have experienced double digit drops in obesity and tobacco use and have saved millions of dollars in healthcare costs. Currently, 57 communities across North America have joined Blue Zones Project, impacting more than 4 million Americans nationwide. For more information, visit bluezones.com.
About Adventist Health
Adventist Health is a faith-based, nonprofit integrated health system serving more than 80 communities on the West Coast and Hawaii as well as others across the U.S. through its Blue Zones company, a pioneer in taking a systemic and environmental approach to improving the health of entire cities and communities. Through this work, Adventist Health is leading a 21st century well-being transformation movement. Founded on Seventh-day Adventist heritage and values, Adventist Health provides care in hospitals, clinics, its innovative Adventist Health Hospital@Home program that provides virtual in-patient care at home, home care agencies, hospice agencies and joint-venture retirement centers in both rural and urban communities. Our compassionate and talented team of 37,000 includes associates, medical staff physicians, allied health professionals and volunteers driven in pursuit of one mission: living God's love by inspiring health, wholeness and hope. Together, we are transforming the American healthcare experience with an innovative, yet timeless, whole-person focus on physical, mental, spiritual and social healing to support community well-being.
