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Atlas Senior Living CEO: We’re Growing After Overhauling Leadership Structure 

This March, Atlas Senior Living will open a new community in Venice, Florida, marking the first of four projects the owner/operator has underway as it continues its growth into 2023.

The community – called the Goldton at Venice – is part of a joint venture with DMK Development Group. When it’s finished, the community is planned to include 167 units with 114 earmarked for independent living, 38 for assisted living and 15 for memory care.

The Atlas portfolio now sits at 32 operational communities — soon to be 35 with the projects under development, according to Co-Founder, President and CEO Wyman Hamilton.

In addition to the Goldton at Venice, Atlas Senior Living later this year will open a 231-unit community in the Austin, Texas suburb of Georgetown, followed by an 80-unit assisted living and memory care community in Hudson, Florida. Additionally, Atlas is in March slated to add 16 memory care units to its 45-unit Trussville, Alabama, assisted living community.

Last year, the company added three former Heritage Senior Living AL communities to its portfolio.

The latest growth push is just the beginning for the company. Looking ahead, Hamilton said he wants to expand the Birmingham, Alabama-based company’s already broad footprint in South Carolina while continuing to grow in Florida. He also is looking at several opportunities in Tennessee and Mississippi.

Hamilton is no stranger to development or senior living. In the past, he has built communities with amenities such as bars themed after Ralph Lauren to stand apart from competitors in the local market.

Atlas is pairing that growth with newly optimized operations and new management practices honed by the pandemic’s hardships over the last three years.

Atlas is expanding and evolving after a period that Hamilton described as a little bumpy for new development and construction.

“I’d say 2021 was probably the worst time to be building something because of the supply chain issues and the costs,” Hamilton said.

But those Covid-fueled slowdowns also had the benefit of honing the company’s operations, as Wyman said it forced Atlas leaders to review how they manage communities.

Labor, along with macroeconomic inflation pressures and supply chain disruptions, put operators in a tough spot in the past year.In response, some raised rates as much as 10% or more just to keep up with costs.

Atlas was in a similar boat and facing costs related to the usage of staffing agencies in particular. The company had previously used “large amounts of temp staffing,” which Hamilton chalked up to issues with certain community leaders.

“When times are tough, it exposes a lot of holes in leadership that maybe you didn’t know were there,” he said. “Sometimes you can fall into the trap where the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.”

Those difficulties prompted a re-examination of the company’s leadership structure and ultimately led to adding a new position to keep the company’s managers moving in time.

Before April 2022, Atlas employed regional directors of operations, regional sales and marketing directors and regional directors of clinical compliance, with the regional directors reporting up the ladder to respective vice presidents.

Now, the regional sales and marketing and clinical compliance directors report to a separate regional director, who then reports up the ladder.

He added that now, the top-down support from Atlas leadership has improved at the community level and the collaborative communication from the community level to the corporate level have both improved as a result of the change.

The post Atlas Senior Living CEO: We’re Growing After Overhauling Leadership Structure  appeared first on Senior Housing News.

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