What It Means to Live the Optima Way

At Optima Lakeview, we’ve asked the same question from the very beginning: what does it mean to build a place where people genuinely thrive? The answer lives in the natural light that fills the atrium on a Tuesday morning. In the conversation that starts between neighbors in the courtyard. In the feeling, hard to name but impossible to miss, that the place you’ve come home to was built by people who cared deeply. That feeling has a foundation. It’s what we call the Optima way.

A Growth Mindset, Built Into Everything

Since Optima’s founding, growth has been defined on our own terms, not by market cycles, but by a continuing journey to expand what’s possible in the built environment. At Optima Lakeview, that mindset produced something Chicago had never seen: a building organized entirely around a seven-story landscaped atrium enclosed by a skylight, a living, light-filled heart that makes this community feel genuinely unlike any other address in the city.

The Freedom to Innovate

At Optima, we control every aspect of the design, development, and management process, and that integration is what gives us the freedom to make decisions based on what we believe is right, without compromise. At Optima Lakeview, that freedom produced the skylit atrium at the heart of the building, a vertical hanging garden that fills the interior with natural light and greenery year-round. A series of landscaped terraces that blur the boundary between inside and outside. A rooftop sky deck with a heated year-round pool and views of the city and the lake. When you own the entire process, you can hold the vision all the way to the end.

Committed to Lasting Impact

Everything Optima builds is designed to withstand the aesthetic test of time. We challenge what’s accepted and defy what’s expected. At Optima Lakeview, that means a building on North Broadway that has redefined what residential architecture looks like in one of Chicago’s most beloved neighborhoods and continues to do so. The goal is never the moment. It’s always the bigger picture.

Passion for Creating Together

At Optima, everyone creates. Our culture is defined by openness and collaboration, the belief that the best ideas can come from anywhere. At Optima Lakeview, that culture is visible in every shared space: the atrium that turns a walk to the elevator into a daily encounter with light and nature, the rooftop that becomes a gathering place above the city, the management team that takes the experience of living here seriously. The passion for creating together doesn’t stop at the property line.

All In, All the Time

We are as passionate about the small details as we are about the big picture. The quality of light in the atrium at different hours of the day. The planting selections that ensure the hanging gardens look extraordinary in February as well as June. The material chosen for a countertop because it gets more beautiful with use. These are not finishing touches at Optima Lakeview. They are the whole point, because residents experience them every single day, and every single day is worth getting right.

What It Means for You

To live the Optima way at Optima Lakeview is to live in a building that brought genuine architectural ambition to one of Chicago’s most storied neighborhoods, in a home built by people who believe architecture is one of the most powerful forces for human good, and who act on that belief at every scale, without compromise.

Come experience what living the Optima way actually feels like. Schedule a tour at Optima Lakeview today.