One credential for everything: how Penrose Square secured 300 apartments, a retail square, and a shared garage
Carbon Companies brought in three-layered security solutions for Penrose Square: proximity pendants, visitor management, and video surveillance.
Key highlights
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A keyless pendant that works everywhere – Programmed to tie into Penrose Square’s access control system, each tenant’s proximity pendant works like a car’s keyless entry across base-building entry points, individual apartments, maintenance facilities, fitness centers, elevators, and garages.
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Visitors authorized by tenants, not staff – Kastle’s visitor management software lets tenants personally authorize their own guests rather than routing every visitor through a front desk.
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55 cameras across the development – Penrose Square layered video surveillance throughout the property, adding a second line of defense on top of access control.
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A protected video command center – The maintenance office housing the video command center is secured with window detection and motion sensors.
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A repeat customer’s $80 million development – The Carbon Companies chose Kastle for Penrose Square based on previous positive experience with Kastle’s systems.
About Penrose Square and The Carbon Companies
The Carbon Companies developed Penrose Square, an $80 million mixed-use project and the first of three planned squares that make up the Columbia Pike Town Center. Located just down the road from the Pentagon in a high-traffic urban setting, the development includes 120,000 square feet of specialty retail and office space, 300 luxury apartments and townhomes, and a shared garage.
The challenge
Penrose Square needed to appeal to both new and existing tenants across a mix of retail, office, and residential space in a high-traffic urban setting just down the road from the Pentagon, while giving each group a security experience suited to how they actually use the property.
That meant finding a single system flexible enough to secure everything from individual apartment doors to shared amenities like fitness centers, elevators, and garages, while also letting tenants manage their own visitors instead of relying on a front desk at every building.
The solution
Based on previous positive experience with Kastle, the Carbon Companies brought in three layered security solutions for Penrose Square: proximity pendants, visitor management, and video surveillance. Kastle specially programmed each tenant's pendant to work like a car’s keyless entry, tied directly into Penrose Square’s access control system to grant access to base-building entry points, individual apartments, maintenance facilities, fitness centers, elevators, and garages.
Kastle also installed software that lets tenants authorize their own visitors, and Penrose Square added another layer of security with 55 cameras placed throughout the development. The maintenance office housing the video command center is protected by window detection and motion sensors.
The outcome
The result is a single, tenant-friendly security system that covers Penrose Square’s mix of retail, office, and residential space, from individual front doors to shared garages and amenities, while giving tenants direct control over who else can get in.
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