How should a new manager think about exterior lighting at a 24 unit garden style complex

Ran a 32-unit 1989 garden style in Gwinnett about four years ago, very similar bones to what you are describing. I went the retrofit kit route on the HPS housings to save money and I paid for it. Eighteen months later three of the kits failed because the housings were already corroding inside, and the color rendering on the cheap kits I bought was so yellow that residents on the parking lot side said it felt worse than before. Full fixture swap to 40W-equivalent LED wall packs, 5000K color temp, roughly 4,000 lumens each, mounted at about 12 feet is what I should have done from the start. At my property that was running about $290 per exterior fixture fully installed, I had 18 of them, and the retrofit false economy still cost me more between callbacks and one liability letter from a resident who slipped in a corner I had underlighted. For the breezeways, vapor-tight strip fixtures only, the humidity in Atlanta summers destroys open fixtures fast and you will be swapping them constantly otherwise. Your $9,000 for 24 units is workable if you get three bids and go direct to an electrical contractor rather than a lighting reseller marking everything up.

On controls, individual photocells on each fixture is the right call at your scale. One dead photocell does not take down the whole lot the way a single timer or centralized controller failure would. I would not do motion-only in the parking areas, constant dusk to dawn on the lot perimeter, full stop. Motion sensing is fine as a supplement in the breezeways to add a burst of brightness when someone is actually moving through, but the base level should never drop to dark. The glare complaint problem from lot-facing units is real and I got two of them. Fixtures with

$9k is workable but not comfortable if the conduit runs are long or the panel needs a new circuit. That's where budgets blow up fast on 1987 builds.

On the retrofit versus swap question, I'd go full fixture swap on the parking lot wall packs, not kits. Kits save maybe $40 a head and then you're fighting driver compatibility issues on 35-year-old housings that weren't designed for LED thermals. Breezeways I'd do dusk-to-dawn constant on at low lumens, around 800 to 1000, because motion sensors in a breezeway create dark gaps between trips and that's a liability conversation you don't want.

The thing I'd want to know before signing off on any of this is whether the current circuits are on a shared meter or individually sub-metered, because if you're pulling from a common area panel that's already loaded, you might need an electrician in before a single fixture goes up.

$9k is tight if you're doing full fixture swaps on the parking lot poles too, comfortable if those HPS wall packs can take a retrofit bulb and the housings aren't corroded through. First thing I'd want to know before committing is whether Georgia Power has a commercial LED rebate active in your zip right now, because in metro Atlanta suburbs I've seen that knock 15 to 20% off fixture cost and it changes the math on full swap versus retrofit pretty fast.

On motion versus dusk-to-dawn, parking lots at garden-style complexes I've seen funded go dark-complaint heavy with motion, tenants feel unsafe walking to their car at 11pm and you get calls. Breezeways are where motion makes sense. What's the unit mix facing the lot, how many ground-floor tenants are actually in the glare zone?

For a 24-unit garden style at that size, $9k lands you in full fixture swap territory if you stay disciplined, so skip the retrofit kits entirely. The old HPS housings on an 87 build are corroded and you will be fighting them the whole way. Dusk to dawn photocell on each fixture beats a central timer, since one timer failure takes the entire property dark at once and you are the one getting the 2am call. On brightness, 1 footcandle average across the parking lot surface is the baseline liability threshold generally cited in Georgia, and you want a uniformity ratio under 4:1 so there are no dark pockets between the bright spots, because that is where incidents happen. Full cutoff housings throw the light down instead of out, which also handles glare complaints from the lot-facing units. Breezeways run better constant on than on motion, because the motion delay creates a dark entry moment that tenants legitimately hate.

Nine thousand for a 24-unit with dead HPS wall packs and non-functional breezeway fixtures is going to get eaten faster than you think once you start pulling permits and find out the conduit runs are corroded or undersized, which in an Atlanta-area 1987 build is almost guaranteed in at least two or three locations. The one thing I have never seen work is buying retrofit kits to split the difference on cost, people install them in housings that are already degraded and they are back on a ladder six months later because the housing itself is the problem. Full swap on the wall packs, budget around $180 to $240 per fixture installed for a decent 40-watt LED with a 5000K color temp, and do not go above that color temp or the units facing the lot will complain about the blue cast bleeding through their windows at night. For the breezeways, dusk-to-dawn photocell on constant low is cleaner operationally than motion, because motion in a breezeway means every tenant walking to their car at 2am triggers a strobe effect and you start getting calls. Individual photocells per fixture beat a single timer the moment daylight saving hits and half your lot goes dark at 5:45pm before the timer trips.