How to Choose Your Optima Community: A Guide to Finding the Right Fit

May 11, 2026

For more than four decades, Optima has been designing and building luxury residential communities across Arizona and Illinois. Today, the portfolio spans six distinct communities, each offering its own scale, setting, and way of living. What unites them is Optima’s unmistakable design philosophy: Modernist architecture, bold geometric forms, carefully curated materials, open-concept living, and the brand’s signature vertical landscaping. What makes each one different is the lifestyle it creates. The right Optima community comes down to where you want to wake up, how you want to spend your weekends, and what kind of place feels most like home.

Here’s a guide to all six.

The Chicago and North Shore Communities

Optima Signature: Streeterville, Chicago

Optima Signature rises above Chicago’s skyline as a 57-story luxury apartment tower in Streeterville, featuring 490 residences and 58,000 square feet of street-level retail and commercial space. If your ideal life involves walking to the lakefront in the morning, working downtown, and coming home to skyline views from a high floor, Optima Signature is built for you. The amenity experience is equally elevated, featuring resort-style indoor and outdoor heated pools, sauna and steam rooms, basketball, squash, and bocce courts, and a golf simulator. Within the Optima portfolio, it offers the most dynamic urban high-rise lifestyle.

Best for: Anyone drawn to skyline living, world-class amenities, and immediate access to the Loop and the lakefront, the most urban, high-rise experience Optima offers.

Two modern glass skyscrapers behind green trees and a manicured lawn in an urban park setting.

Optima Lakeview: Lakeview, Chicago

Optima Lakeview is a seven-story, transit-oriented residential community at 3460 N. Broadway, featuring 198 one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments along with 14,000 square feet of street-level retail in the heart of Lakeview. The defining architectural feature is the landscaped interior atrium that rises through the building’s seven-story core, capped by a fixed skylight that draws natural light deep into the residence experience. Its 40,000 square feet of amenities include a rooftop sky deck with a year-round heated pool and spa, an indoor basketball court, a golf simulator, a yoga and stretching studio, a dog park and pet spa, and a demonstration kitchen.

Best for: Residents seeking a design-driven community with exceptional amenities, a connected neighborhood atmosphere, and effortless access to transit and the best of Chicago.

Rooftop view with pool, city skyline, outdoor seating, and glass roof at dusk.

Optima Verdana: Wilmette, IL

Located in the heart of Wilmette, Optima Verdana brings Optima’s design-forward approach to the North Shore with 100 luxury rental residences and 8,000 square feet of street-level retail, positioned directly across from the Metra station for seamless commuter access. Inside each residence, elevated finishes meet thoughtful functionality, with premium kitchens, flexible spaces designed for working from home, and expansive private terraces framed by Optima’s signature vertical landscaping. Over 60 acres of lakefront, including beaches and a sailing harbor, are within walking distance. Anchoring the entry plaza is Curves and Voids, a sculpture whose laser-cut steel arcs catch the North Shore light differently in every season.

Best for: Residents who want suburban scale and lakefront access without giving up urban convenience or design quality, and who value an easy commute into the city.

Modern glass apartment building with balconies, next to a brick structure and a fenced sidewalk.

The Arizona Communities

Optima Sonoran Village: Old Town Scottsdale

Sonoran Village is the largest existing community in the portfolio: a 10-acre, 5-building, 768-residence mixed-use community in Old Town Scottsdale with 13,000 square feet of commercial space and over 5 acres of lushly landscaped courtyards. Its sculpture garden alone houses five original Cor-Ten steel works, Silver Fern, Duo, Triangles, Intersecting Arches, and Curves and Voids, distributed through the courtyards so residents encounter art on the way to the pool, not in a gallery setting. The location puts you in the middle of everything Old Town Scottsdale has to offer.

Best for: Residents who want walkable Old Town Scottsdale energy, a true community feel across multiple buildings, and the most immersive art-and-architecture experience in the portfolio.

Modern apartment buildings at dusk, with lights on and car trails visible on the street.

Optima Kierland: Kierland, Scottsdale

Located in the heart of North Scottsdale near Kierland Commons and Scottsdale Quarter, Optima Kierland is a five-tower luxury community that brings together both for-sale condominiums and luxury rental residences in one of Arizona’s most design-forward urban neighborhoods. Spanning approximately 9.5 acres, the community blends striking modern architecture, sweeping desert and golf course views, and Optima’s signature vertical landscaping that wraps each tower in living greenery.

What makes Optima Kierland unique is its building-by-building approach to lifestyle. Rather than relying on one centralized amenity deck, each tower features its own private residents’ club and rooftop wellness experience. The community includes two condominium towers alongside three apartment towers, 7160, 7140, and 7190, with 579 rental residences across the apartment collection. Across the community, residents enjoy rooftop pools and spas, state-of-the-art fitness spaces, golf simulators, pickleball, landscaped courtyards, and Arizona’s first rooftop running track. Inside, residences feature floor-to-ceiling glass, expansive private terraces, and gourmet kitchens designed to blur the line between indoor and outdoor living.

Best for: Residents who want a high-rise rental experience in North Scottsdale with proximity to premier shopping and dining, and who value being able to choose the tower that best matches their lifestyle.

Modern apartment buildings with glass balconies along a street, with a white car driving past in the foreground.

Optima McDowell Mountain: North Scottsdale

Optima McDowell Mountain is the newest Optima community in North Scottsdale, set on 22 acres of desert with sweeping views of the McDowell Mountains, Pinnacle Peak, and Camelback. Tower 7220 offers 210 luxury rental residences from studios to three-bedrooms, and Tower 7230 brings condominium ownership with residences now selling.

Life at 7220 is centered around wellness, outdoor living, and connection to the desert. Residents can start the day with a rooftop workout or coffee overlooking the McDowell Mountains, spend afternoons relaxing by the rooftop pool, playing pickleball, or working remotely from thoughtfully designed coworking spaces, then end the evening with a sunset spa session or dinner on a private terrace surrounded by Optima’s signature vertical landscaping.

What makes the experience especially unique is the scale of what surrounds it. With 75% of the site dedicated to landscaped open space and one of the largest private rainwater harvesting systems in the United States, even the first tower feels connected to a much larger vision, one that blends architecture, sustainability, and the year-round outdoor lifestyle that defines North Scottsdale.

Best for: Anyone drawn to sweeping desert views and the newest construction in the portfolio, with the option to rent at Tower 7220 or own at Tower 7230.

Modern multi-story building with glass exterior, balconies, and rooftop greenery at sunset, viewed from a lawn.

How to Decide

A few questions to narrow it down:

Where do you want to live? Illinois (Optima Signature, Optima Lakeview, Optima Verdana) or Arizona (Optima Sonoran Village, Optima Kierland, Optima McDowell Mountain)? Within those, do you want urban core (Optima Signature, Optima Lakeview), suburban-with-transit (Optima Verdana), downtown walkability (Optima Sonoran Village), or a quieter neighborhood feel with mountain views (Optima Kierland, Optima McDowell Mountain)?

What scale of community do you want? Choices range from intimate (Verdana at 100 residences) to mid-sized (Lakeview at 198, Signature at 490, Kierland at 579) to neighborhood-scale (Sonoran Village at 768, McDowell Mountain at 1,330 when fully built).

What matters most in your daily life? Lakefront walks and skyline views? A landscaped atrium and a transit stop? A sculpture garden between you and the pool? An Olympic-length rooftop pool with desert views in every direction? Each Optima community is custom-designed to its physical location, so the question isn’t really which one is best, it’s which one is best for you.

Explore Optima’s communities further and discover even more of the details that make each one unique.