The team behind downtown Miami’s upcoming mixed-use development, Legacy Hotel & Residences, has signed a joint venture deal called Blue Legacy Ventures (JV) with faith-based nonprofit integrated health system Adventist Health.

Together the JV will lease and operate a first-of-its-kind 120,000sq ft health and wellbeing facility called Blue Zone Centre. The location is Adventist Health's first flagship centre for wellbeing.

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.

Blue Zones applies 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.

California-based Adventist Health acquired Blue Zones in 2020 as a key step forward in its commitment to leading a 21st-century wellbeing transformation movement.

The health and wellbeing centre will sit within Legacy Hotel & Residences which will be situated within the upcoming mega-project Miami Worldcenter, created by developer RPC.

A 360-degree approach

The Blue Zone Centre’s services will include diagnostic, surgical, medical, spa, fitness, lifestyle medicine and wellbeing improvement programming.

The estimated US$100m (€84.6m, £72.8m), 10-floor centre will reflect all parties' shared vision to make Miami Worldcenter, and eventually Miami as a whole, the next Blue Zones community.

Guests at the facility will have the ability to benefit from a lifestyle approach to medicine and an evidence-based approach to wellbeing 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 centre from the ground up.

The Blue Zones facility at Legacy Hotel & Residences will combine modern medicine, holistic healing, and sophisticated artificial intelligence and technology for members, guests, residents and employees.

A membership model will offer high-touch, frequent interactions and deeply rooted health relationships with patients, members, residents and visitors.

"This will be a more advanced way of addressing health, where the patient's journey begins with a highly personalised medical evaluation by your physician, followed by a unique and customised high-tech and high-touch programme that utilises all of the services within the centre to keep people well and happy," said Stephen Watson, managing partner of RPC Health, which envisioned and lead the development of the centre.

"We believe this combination of advanced diagnostics with lifestyle medicine and unparalleled personalised care will help members reach and sustain their optimal health."

Blue Zone design and environments

Blue Zones takes a systems-focused approach to designing places and spaces that improve the comprehensive health and wellbeing for everyone that moves through it – from the patient to the family to the 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 wellbeing.

Everyone can expect an immersive Blue Zones experience as they visit the Legacy Hotel & Residences where the healthy choice is the easy choice, from the building design encouraging natural movement, to the 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 programme, movement activation in downtown Miami's planned 80-acre park system as well as the creation of the Blue Zones interactive Exploratorium.

“The JV leverages our joint capabilities and competencies to combine our transformative model for creating optimal wellbeing with RPC's expertise in forward-thinking development and placemaking," said Ben Leedle, CEO of Blue Zones.

"Creating the first Blue Zones Centre and integrated large-scale lifestyle medicine centre marks our commitment to move beyond sick care," added Bill Wing, president, Adventist Health.

"It will also establish a model and lead the way to the fusion of care, health and wellbeing."

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