The current surge in new luxury apartment projects does nothing to fill the Daytona Beach area’s need for more affordable housing, but local observer G.G. Galloway believes it could be helping address another chronic problem.
“For years, our greatest export has been our young people,” said the longtime commercial Realtor, referring to the “brain drain” trend of homegrown talent leaving to pursue opportunities in larger metro areas.
“Now we’re starting to keep our greatest asset, the young minds being educated right here,” said Galloway, a partner with Coldwell Banker Commercial Benchmark Properties in Ormond Beach. “An aging community dies. We need to keep our young people here.”
Keys to attracting and retaining young professionals include creating more high-paying jobs such as the ones being offered at companies like Daytona Beach-based Brown & Brown Insurance, Ormond Beach-based Security First Insurance, both of which are building new headquarters in the area, as well as medical products manufacturer B.Braun.
Other keys include opportunities for millennials to connect with one another, such as the Volusia and Ormond young professionals groups and the need for amenities such as a greater selection of shopping, dining and entertainment options, which are being created in places like Tanger Outlets and Tomoka Town Center shopping centers as well as the One Daytona complex across from Daytona International Speedway.
But there is also the need for housing options that can appeal to young professionals.
That’s where luxury apartments, such as the new Tomoka Pointe Apartments set to welcome its first new tenants next to Tomoka Town Center, and Icon One Daytona Apartments along International Speedway Boulevard come in.
Christian Harris, 22, is an account executive with Brown & Brown who has enlisted two friends, both also in their twenties, to become roommates with him in one of the first apartment units at Tomoka Pointe.