Serenbe residents
A useful, beautiful neighborhood store that rewards repeat visits.
A retail concept for Spela
PLAYWELL.
A store for a life well played.
A modern lifestyle store created for the way people already live at Serenbe.
The name
Spela means
play.
Serenbe has always been about more than where people live.
It’s about how they live.
01 / The idea
Spela is built around the idea of play.
Playwell is the retail expression of that idea.
Playwell is a modern lifestyle store created for the way people already live at Serenbe: outside often, connected to the land, casually well-dressed, surrounded by good people, and intentional about the things they bring into their lives.
Apparel, footwear, outdoor essentials, home and garden goods, books, gifts and locally made objects—brought together around one simple idea:
Live well.
Play well.
02 / A life well played
Not categories.
One way of life.
From the first trail of the morning to the last conversation at the table, Playwell belongs to the rhythm already here.
Outside often.
Casually well-dressed.
Choosing fewer, better things.
Trail · Garden · Table · Town · Road
03 / The store
Not an outdoor store.
Not an apparel store.
A lifestyle store.
Playwell should feel like Serenbe, in store form. Warm woods. Canvas. Leather. Plants and garden goods. Beautiful books stacked beside trail gear. A great jacket next to something for the table. Things for the dog. Things for the garden. Things you didn’t know you wanted until you walked through the door.
04 / The edit
Fewer,
better things.
01Apparel
02Footwear
03Outdoor
04Home
05Garden
06Books
07Gifts
08Local goods
Potential anchors include Filson, Barbour, Danner, Faherty and Best Made Co.—alongside smaller Southern makers and emerging brands.
05 / Why it works
“The best neighborhood retail doesn’t just capture traffic.
It creates it.”
Serenbe visitors
A destination and discovery experience that gives visitors something meaningful to take home.
Spela
A signature retail concept that reinforces the identity of the district itself.
06 / More than retail
A place to shop.
A reason to gather.
“Not programming for programming’s sake.
Reasons for people to gather.”
Trail mornings · Garden workshops · Visiting makers · Seasonal gatherings · Product launches · Local collaborations · Children’s outdoor experiences · Limited Serenbe merchandise · Field guides and local discoveries
07 / The place
It should feel like it has always been here.
Generous windows.
Warm evening light.
Natural materials.
Merchandise visible from the street.
Plants and objects reaching toward the sidewalk.
A strong connection between inside and outside.
08 / The opportunity
A highly visible, ground-floor home at the meeting point of village and landscape.
Playwell is seeking approximately 1,400–2,000 square feet of street-front retail within Spela.
- Ideal location
- Where pedestrian activity, retail and the district’s connection to the outdoors intersect.
- Target opening
- Aligned with Spela construction completion.
- Opening investment
- Owner funded.
- Build-out
- Owner funded.
- Lease
- Open to a structure that works for Serenbe, including base rent plus percentage rent.
09 / The business case
A considered scale.
A credible opportunity.
Illustrative 1,600 sq ft store
Conservative
$300sales / sq ft$480,000 annual revenueBase
$375sales / sq ft$600,000 annual revenueUpside
$450sales / sq ft$720,000 annual revenueOpening inventory + build-out planning range
$150K–$300K
Illustrative planning estimates only. These figures are not a guarantee of future performance.
10 / The founder
Why I’m building it.
Twenty-five years in real estate—including years spent building the systems that make planned communities actually work—have made me a student of what Serenbe does well: the deliberate, unglamorous work of building a place people want to live.
A home and a business here, as a last chapter, isn’t a departure from that career. It’s where it was always headed.
Named for Hutcheson Ferry Road—the ground Serenbe is built on.