Highland Lake Apartments: Residential Wireless

Residential & MDU:
Highland Lake Luxury Apartment Homes


Challenge • Attract more and more tenants by offering desired amenities, such as wireless • After an expensive and unsuccessful deployment of another vendor's wireless solution, property manager needed a better way to provide tenants with wireless coverage Meraki Solution • Deployment: 32 Meraki Outdoors • Cost: $6,368 Results • Reliable, easy to manage wireless coverage for 800 tenants across 40,000 square feet of property • Solution is entirely outdoor-based; no devices required inside residential units • Deployed in less than a week without disturbing a single tenant • Less than 5% of the price of another vendor's solution		It's been one of the best investments I've made. Tanis Tamar Community Manager, Highland Lake Apartments

The Full Story

Laramar Group manages a $2 billion real estate portfolio. Founded in 1989, Laramar has purchased, redeveloped, and managed over 25,000 residual units in more than 20 major U.S. markets. Many of Laramar's properties, including Highland Lake Luxury Homes near Atlanta, GA, compete for high-end tenants, who insist on the latest amenities.

Tanis Tamar is the community manager of Highland Lake, a 400 unit property spread over 400,000 sq ft. Many tenants are medical students and they need reliable internet access. Tamar, who is committed to providing optimal comfort and convenience, wanted to offer free wireless, but he needed it to be fast, reliable, and affordable.

Tamar first approached a well-known wireless vendor, who recommended a powerful access point, and a large and expensive antenna. Despite the substantial investment, very few Highland tenants were able to access the network. Most of their laptops and PDAs received intermittent connectivity or no signal at all. This was not the affordable and reliable wireless solution he was looking for.

Tamar next went looking for a more robust, enterprise-like system, to provide stronger coverage. One vendor quoted him nearly $500,000, far beyond Tamar's budget.

Tamar then turned to SmartWave, a local Meraki partner. Tamar's requirements were clearly defined: no equipment could be installed inside the tenant's apartments; the system needed to provide reliable coverage for the entire property; and the system needed to support heavy usage. SmartWave performed the on-sight installation, taking only a week to implement the Meraki hardware, leaving the tenants undisturbed.

The current network relies on 32 Meraki Outdoors and 5 wired Internet connections. Each Meraki Outdoor has been mounted on the outside of buildings, allowing the tenants to receive a strong wireless signal through their windows.

Tamar manages the Meraki network on his own by using Dashboard, Meraki's web-based, hosted service. The service has been very helpful, allowing him to manage and reconfigure the network on a real-time basis, with just one click, from anywhere. And when the system needs a boost due to increased usage, Tamar can easily add another Meraki Outdoor to ensure that each of his tenants has access to free, fast, and reliable wireless connection.

With a modest investment, Highland Lakes is now able to market its enhanced amenities and attract more tenants by offering free, fast, advertised wireless throughout the entire property.

"It's been one of the best investments I've made," says Tamar.