With Spring now upon us, the time for hosting events and breathing life into your residential building has never been better. An important part of life is the time you spend experiencing food and fun activities with those around you. It is without a doubt an important thing to consider for the residents in your apartment building, and can indeed be a deciding factor for resident retention. Community building events not only provide a social platform for your neighbors to interact, but also provide an opportunity for new residents to meet their new neighbors, or even introduce older neighbors that have never had a prior chance to meet.

Event Types and Creating Community

While these communal events are obviously an important factor in the social fabric of your resident’s life, what type of events you should provide can vary depending on who lives in your building, and what amenities your building offers. As these can vary a bit, we’ve provided some event ideas that should cover the vast majority!

1.    Everyone Loves a BBQ

Food is one of the simplest and most essential ways to set up a proper event. Life and community revolves around dinner table, so why not bring out a lot of tables and fire up the grill!? It is important to remember that with a greater number of people, there are a greater number of potential diet restrictions, so it is best to provide multiple food options in order to include everyone to ensure adequate resident satisfaction.

2.    Giving Back

Programs such as food and clothing drives create a sense of caring and social responsibility. This is a relatively simple way to provide your residents with an easy opportunity to give back to their local community. Not only does giving make people feel good, but it can also be a means to cleaning out items that would otherwise not be used and only taking up space. It’s a win win!
 
3.    Pool Party

A great way to open your pool for the new season is to have a pool party. There are a number of great pool party options that are fun for everyone. Set up a pool volleyball net, hire an outdoor entertainer and/or a DJ, set up some competitive games to win prizes, and most definitely water balloons and water gun games.

4.    Pizza Night

Easily the simplest way to gather your community is with pizza. Everyone loves pizza! If you have a common area with a television or movie screen, you can even do a pizza and movie night. Pizza is inexpensive and a great dish to serve at a Spring event.

Providing some of these options for your residents will most certainly be a bridge for social connections and help establish a healthy community among them (as well as with you and your staff). Some of these events take a good amount of planning to ensure the function goes smoothly, so don’t delay and get a plan started right away! For other event ideas, check out the resources at  Occupancy Solutions. We can not only help you come up with great ideas for resident events, but to make sure those events add to your business’ reputation and increase resident retention.