Columbine Health System’s Wilson claims rich reward

After 35 years of building a health-care and retirement-living business that generates $80 million in annual revenue, Columbine Health Systems President and CEO Bob Wilson is set to reap his reward.

The payoff is coming in grand style, in the form of a $4.85 million residence now under construction on a 36-acre plot of land overlooking the Big Thompson River just northwest of Johnstown.

“You ought to be able to accumulate something after 35 years, and that’s what I’m doing,” Wilson said of the project that broke ground last month and will be finished early next summer. “I suppose it’s human nature for people to be envious or jealous, and I’m prepared for that.”

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Wilson also doesn’t shy from describing how the money his private company generates, including a $17 million refinance package secured on two of his senior independent-living apartment buildings, pays part of the cost of the home he and his wife, Kitty, are building.

“It goes from one pocket to the other,” he said. “It’s one pool.”

Drahota Construction Co., the Fort Collins general contractor known more for hotels, medical centers and office buildings, is including Wilson’s home among a select few single-family projects in its recent history.

Components listed on separate Larimer County building permits include:

n The 8,600-square-foot, $3.6 million contemporary-style home.

n A 6,400-square-foot, $800,000 “car barn” to store Wilson’s growing collection of classic automobiles.

n A 3,600-square-foot, $450,000 horse barn.

n A $20,000 entry gate on east Larimer County Road 20C that marks the quarter-mile road leading to the residential complex.

“It’s a very sophisticated home,´ said Drahota project manager Doug McCarthy, who along with company president Terry Drahota traces a long friendship with Wilson back to their days as Colorado State University students.

‘More contemporary’

“It’s a little more like a commercial project than a true residential one,” McCarthy said. “It’s a little more contemporary than most homes you see.”

The Wilsons’ new home, designed by Vaught-Frye Architects of Fort Collins, will be built entirely on one level, with soaring, cantilevered roof planes that span toward the mountain vistas on the west. Radiant floor heating and solar energy features will make it one of the most energy-efficient homes of its size.

“This will be the last house I build,” Wilson said, describing how he had spent the last couple of decades in Fort Collins building several other homes, moving up in the market as his business grew, keeping pace with one of the nation’s fastest-developing regions.

Columbine employs 1,150 people at 10 sites in Northern Colorado, ranging from skilled nursing-care centers to independent-living apartment buildings. The network also includes service subsidiaries that provide home care, medical equipment, pharmacy services and rehabilitative therapy.

Another Columbine location, the new $17 million Lemay Avenue Health and Rehabilitation Center, is under construction in south Fort Collins. Some of the capital for that project comes from the $17 million in loans on the Worthington apartment building in Fort Collins and the Wexford, a similar building in Loveland.

The loans, arranged through Denver-based NorthMarq Capital Inc., carry a 5.9 percent interest rate, far more favorable than the federally supported Freddie Mac loan that Wilson said he had in place at the Wexford in Loveland.

“It was a great opportunity,” Wilson said. “The rate was very favorable, and we needed some capital for renovations at the Worthington and other projects.”

Long history

Wilson, 59, began his Columbine career in October 1970 when he migrated west from his native Iowa and took a carpentry job at Columbine East, one of Fort Collins’ oldest nursing homes.

“I was building handrails, hanging doors,” he said.

By June 1971, after Columbine East slipped toward bankruptcy, he had become the center’s chief administrator. He leased the center from Home Federal Bank following a foreclosure, then bought it several years later.

His purchase of 30 acres of land flanking Centre Avenue, in the heart of Fort Collins, from the Everitt Cos. set in motion a growth spurt during the 1980s and ’90s that made Columbine the region’s largest senior health-care and retirement-living company.

“Fort Collins has been awfully good to me,” Wilson said. “I have truly been in the right place during the right time. Here’s a community that’s been designated as the best in the nation to retire to, and here I am in the retirement business.”

His friends also say Wilson has been good to Fort Collins. A five-kilometer run in Columbine’s name earlier this month drew hundreds of participants and raised thousands of dollars for Alzheimer’s disease sufferers. A permanent endowment at Colorado State University, funded by Columbine, supports scholarships.

Builder McCarthy, who has worked with Wilson on virtually all his major construction projects, has chosen Columbine for the needs of his own family.

“My mother was at the Centre Avenue Health and Rehab Center for almost two years,” he said. “The reason she was there was quality of life. Bob provides that.”