Timothy Johnson
President and CEO, Frasier (Boulder, Colo.)
Timothy Johnson has spent his entire 45-year career in senior living, developing and managing senior living communities with a focus on nonprofit organizations. From the onset, he’s held to the belief that he could make a difference by continually responding to the evolving needs of the senior living field.
Currently, that means undertaking nearly $200 million of enhancements and redevelopment at Frasier, an independent, not-for-profit, mission-driven senior living community serving nearly 500 residents, which he took the helm of in 2010. Over the last five years, the self-described architect “wanna-be” has played a hands-on role transforming the 60-plus-year-old campus, overseeing the new architectural design for 98 new independent living residences and a new Center for Healthy Aging, as well as the renovation of existing dining and common areas.
In 2013, he helped guide the community through a tragic flooding that impacted several buildings, including an assisted living and skilled nursing unit, turning the disaster into an opportunity to look at everything it was doing on the campus.
As an early adopter of sustainability and wellness initiatives in the field, he pushed for Frasier to become one of the first communities to pursue the WELL Building Standard for the community’s new independent living apartments and further apply its philosophies through the rest of the community.
Environments for Aging: You’ve spent 45 years in the senior living industry. What’s kept you committed to it throughout your career?
Timothy Johnson: In 1975, I graduated from college and moved to a small town in central California to work at a circa 1900s retirement home, where I also lived. My experience consisted of living in the “old” part of the community, while working on the team that was developing a brand new state-of-the-art retirement community on a hospital campus.
At the time, the executive director was called the “superintendent” and his wife was the “matron,” and resident choice was a novel idea. People were just beginning to realize that perhaps the residents did know something about what they wanted and that we could learn from them.
That same year, I attended my first industry conference. Of the 500 in attendance, I recall that most of the attendees were in their second, third, or fourth careers. I represented a new wave in the industry of those who were focused on the senior living industry as our only career.
I took time off to pursue a master’s degree in Aging Studies because I wanted to make a difference along with all of my contemporaries. We felt empowered that we could make resident choice and intentional design take hold in the industry and I think we have. I haven’t looked back since. Senior living is ever-changing and, as leaders in this field, we’ve continually responded to this evolution.
You’ve been recognized for being ahead of the curve when it comes to sustainability and wellness. Why are those initiatives important to you?
Beginning in the 1990s, I was involved with developing a fitness and wellness concept that resulted in a state-of-the-art fitness center and program at Presbyterian Homes of Illinois. As a result of my work, I was asked to be on a panel to talk about wellness.
I somehow talked my way through the session, but when it was over, I realized I talked the talk but did not walk it. That is when I realized that we needed to live it, not just do it. From that point on, I committed myself that wellness had be an integral part of an organization’s DNA for it to be meaningful. We began the process of embracing the dimensions of wellness and making the program mean more than just the building it was housed in.
The same is true of sustainability. I embraced it, but it wasn’t until I arrived in Boulder in 2010 that I began to understand how to live it. The City of Boulder had already adopted standards that resulted in achieving a LEED-basic level just by building in their city. It seemed disingenuous to take pride in committing to something (like LEED) for which we had no choice.
I became aware of the WELL Building Standard at a senior living conference and set out to learn more about how it seeks to support and advance human health and wellness in the built environment. Frasier had embraced the environmental responsibility and commitment to sustainable design efforts that the community of Boulder was aggressively supporting.
The mantra when I arrived at Frasier was “We are Boulder.” If it was a pursuit that we embraced, then there was no option to not pursue WELL. (Frasier was the first CCRC designed to meet WELL Building Standards for a residential facility when it opened its new Prairies building this past January).
In 2013, Frasier experienced a tragic flooding. How did you turn that disaster into an opportunity to transform the community?
We have a distinction from FEMA that no one wants: the single largest “disaster” in the flash flooding of 2013. It wiped out one of our aging assisted living buildings and half of our skilled nursing community (54 beds).
Prior to the flood, our organization had completed a strategic plan that resulted in our decision to do a campus master plan in preparation for identifying renovation, replacement, and expansion opportunities on the campus to address our next 60 years. We were already working with Perkins Eastman to shepherd that process and had developed our calendar. When the flood hit, we were ready to go. The flood forced us to look at everything we were doing on the campus.
What lesson did you learn from that experience?
The day after the flood we surveyed the damage. It was massive, but I announced to our residents, staff, and board that we were a better place today than we were before the flood. We knew what had to be done and we never took our eye off the ball.
Being prepared for the unexpected was something we had had been practicing for several years, even if we didn’t fully realize it. When the flood came, we had the strength to carry on. And now we are living through a disaster of different type, along with the rest of the world, during this COVID-19 pandemic.
What’s your vision for what senior living should look like in the future?
I’m still convinced that we can change this world. It continues to be about pursuing communities that offer choice to the people we serve. Our communities will not be like the secluded “islands” of the past but will become hubs for providing services to seniors, many of whom live on our campuses but also, perhaps, many more who live in the larger community.
