Community lifestyle specialist spreads wings with OnPlace

When Lakewood Ranch's Monaca Onstad announced in March 2022 she was leaving as community relations director for Schroeder-Manatee Ranch to launch her own business, it was kind of like being at the bottom of a pool.

"I couldn't breath," she said.

But then her new OnPlace amenities and lifestyle planning business landed a client, and then another, and another.

A year after the launch of OnPlace, she is breathing just fine.

"We started with consulting," said Onstad, who lives in Country Club. "I had a good indication through research that it was needed. What was happening time and again was that (developers) would begin by building the amenities and then think about the programs.

"I didn't know there would be such a big demand."

She did extensive research because she wasn't going to "step off the ledge," but even so it was a bit scary.

"My 20-year career (before starting her new business) was so comfortable," she said. "The biggest thing for me is that I had to be comfortable with being uncomfortable."

On March 4, she held a one-year celebration party to let people know she is doing fine.

"I am very happy with the amount of business we have received," she said. "All of my clients have been referrals."

So far, her clients have been in regions where master-planned communities thrive, such as Florida, Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina. 

She is considering whether she wants to expand as far west as Arizona and California, also hot spots for master-planned communities.

Not only is her business expanding in terms of clients, but she also has already launched another division, OnVie. Besides helping developers "pre-build" their communities with a thoughtful selection and design of amenities, the new division will concentrate on staffing and managing the communities' welcome centers and other amenities, basically overseeing the lifestyle side of the new community.

She has a main staff of six employees with three more coming in April. Mackenzie Straley, who worked with her at SMR, joined OnPlace two weeks after it began and she handles communications, marketing and putting out newsletters for the communities OnVie manages.

"She is integral to our success," Onstad said. "She has worked with me for six years and she can finish my sentences."

Parrish's Amanda Arnold is Onstad's vice president. She has been working with Del Webb's activities program.

While it would seem developing lifestyles programs wouldn't be complicated, Onstad said her clients are busy with everything that goes into a new community, and could use someone to make suggestions about the vision of the amenities.

"Sometimes it is validation of the ideas they had," she said.

She said a typical model involves a developer buying land, going to a landscape architect and then saying what kind of amenities are needed. However, the process often doesn't involve the consideration of the expected demographics of the community, or what the landscape is like surrounding the property, or what kind of lifestyle people in the area want to live.

OnPlace does all the research to find out those questions and more.

"Take pickleball, for instance," she said. "I do research on pickleball projects in the area and around the nation because I don't want to tell them you need six pickleball courts and four tennis courts without doing some deep research. I give them a good report and vision from around the country."

Onstad said it is important to understand how spaces are used and how people connect.

"If you do that, you can start changing the way we build things," she said.

She gave, as an example, a pool area where parents could lounge in their favorite spot while having a straight line of vision to their children's play area.

"If I am sitting here, I can see my kids over there," she said.

Part of the reason for OnPlace's success, she said, is that developers care about their residents' experience.

"You can pretty much get the same house anywhere you want," Onstad said. "How do you show (your community) to be different?"

To accomplish her goals, Onstad has been a road warrior, leaving her husband Eric Onstad to oversee the household and their two children, 13-year-old Garrett and 19-month-old Alexander.

"Eric asks me sometimes, 'Can we have five minutes without OnPlace?'" she said. "But he is such a good man. He is my biggest fan and he can see the vision on where we are going and what we are building."

Onstad said he chose last year to leave SMR because the Waterside Place project basically was finished with clients beginning to move into the hub. She said it had been launched successfully.

At SMR, she had developed award-winning lifestyle programs in Lakewood Ranch since 2016. In 2017, she was selected as the Lifestyle Director of the Year by the National Association of Home Builders.

She wants OnPlace to "change how lifestyle is done."

Currently she said not a lot of competition exists for her, but she said more developers are realizing the importance of the lifestyle component and she expects competition to increase.

"I want to put in the hard work, and grow a little more," she said. 

She misses her coworkers and staff members at SMR, but added she now has a different kind of coworker, and colleagues.

And she still lives in Lakewood Ranch and is the chair for Lakewood Ranch Community Activities.

"I will still tell you today Lakewood Ranch is the best community in the country," she said. "I love the way it was developed."