Can the built environment intentionally built, cause people to live longer, healthier, better, more productive, impactful lives? with special guest Rob Parker

John’s guest Rob Parker is the President of the Town of Trilith, he has thirty five years of high-impact leadership on a local, national, and international level, including 30 years as a President/CEO. Growth-oriented executive with experience in both corporate and non-profit ventures, as well as blended models that integrate philanthropy into core business strategy. Entertainment executive experience with grammy-award winning, multi-platinum artist. New urbanist design and town building, connected to the film industry, Transformational leader that enjoys creating a compelling vision, crafting a strategy, building a powerful team and then delivering exponential results.

Insights & Inspirations

• The questions I’ve been asking John early on was, is there a better way to live? what’s the construct, the built environment and the programming that happens in it, that causes people to thrive and flourish.  – Rob Parker
  
• And so, ultimately, I landed on this question that I’m trying to answer, which is, can the built environment intentionally built, strategically built and intentional programming, can that cause people to live longer, healthier, better, more productive, impactful lives.  – Rob Parker
  
• Our definition of flourishing in Opelika is when the people who have the least are experiencing the most. – John Marsh
  
• …as President of the town of Trilith, I have the privilege of executing on that, on that vision in that dream. So it comes from his passion and love for people, my passion and love for people, and then we’ve gathered a group of people who are world class in their craft, but also with a chemistry and an alignment around faith and values that is reflected in everything that we do. – Rob Parker
  
• Lou Oliver is our town planner, and our town urbanist and incredibly designed homes, gorgeous. – Rob Parker
  
• It’s 750 single family homes, 600 multifamily. That multifamily is three stories above ground floor retail, we’ve got about 60,000, 70,000 in ground floor retail and then a total of 270,000 square feet of commercial office and retail. Two hotels, about 300 hotel rooms, a fitness, a wellness center which is about a 60,000 square foot kind of state of the art, fitness and wellness center operated by Piedmont hospital for us. Luxury cinema… It’s incredibly green, 51% of it’s dedicated to green space. You either live on a park or within a block of a park. There’s 19 parks in this 235 acres when we’re fully built. So a commitment to sustainability, to green. – Rob Parker
  
•  …one of our core principles is that we want this town to be better in 100 years. So think about that for a second, what are the implications every day to our design and to our build quality, if it’s going to be better in 100 years. And so it really – Rob Parker
  
• And so we’ve had people bought into a smaller lifestyle. And I will tell you that those people come back time after time, about all the stuff they had to give away and sell to get into the 1,200 square feet, and how they couldn’t be happier with their life. It’s more focused on people less on stuff, and kind of has opened space in their life. So that their stuff is not owning them, they’re owning their stuff. And it’s a lot less. – Rob Parker
  
• And so many of us have so much, we have storage buildings, that we have to get more storage buildings. And the weight of that stuff is like open browser windows on your computer. We don’t realize it but it is pulling us down and really you can simplify to multiply. . – John Marsh
  
• “Well, then just follow the three M’s, who’s your master? What’s your mission? Who you going to marry?” And you get those three everything else is going to work out pretty good. – Treutt Cathy
  
• There is a connectivity with my faith being kind of the thread that threads it all together. It’s about investing in people. It’s about creating a sense of community, whether it’s in public housing, and getting kids out of gangs and preventing pregnancy and that kind of thing. – Rob Parker
  
• .” And I guess what triggered for me is that if politics are ultimately all local love is too. Love is local. So love is local says to me that all I have to do is love right here, the people around me and make their lives better. And like leadership, love is highly leveraged, all right. You love people, they will love others better, and it will multiply.- Rob Parker
  
• And I really consider it an honor and a privilege. I said we do sophisticated real estate development with love. And that second part is the magic. There’s a lot of sophisticated real estate developers. But love is such a difference maker. I said you cut God’s finger off it’s a hunk of love. I mean, love isn’t what he does, it’s who he is?- John Marsh
  
•  I was challenged by… We were often challenged by Dan with this question of, is it Tweet-able, Instagram-able? Will somebody want to take a selfie with what you’re designing and building? And not everything can be that because there has to be a backdrop for the great things to show up. – Rob Parker
  
• So just as an example, we did a dog park, and we designed it. The dog park was good. It’s where dogs go and hang out. I thought it was pretty good. And he said, “What’s tweetable about it?” And it’s like… Okay, and so we went back to the drawing board. And now we have one of the most photographed, and quite frankly shared on Instagram, dog parks that you could imagine. And it’s because people love and care about their dogs, and they love and care about this space. And that together it’s something really special. – Rob Parker
  
•  “Can we turn that on its head? And can we create public spaces, including in the town center, where people can sit and linger without pain.” And what it’s created then is a sense of people being in places which gathers other people, which creates this sense of community. And so the joy of kind of creating great outdoor spaces, and then seeing it populated. I think probably the other thing is how design, intentional design can create collisions of people that are positive collisions. – Rob Parker
  
• And every messy street that you see is one step closer to this dream. And so that’s hard when it’s 7:00 AM and that they start building or it’s 8:00 on a Saturday morning, and somebody is building right next to you. I’m not saying it’s easy, but I say it’s we can get everybody to stay focused on the ultimate objective, the vision of where we’re headed, that they’re part of it, and that they are sacrificing right now. And we have said, you will get a nail in your tire. And I am so sorry, but at some point you’re going to get a nail in your tire. And you have a choice, you can be mad at us, and you’ll be unhappy and you could shake your fist or you can recognize that that’s a nail that didn’t make it into the house but that house is getting built and the progress is happening. And so it’s kind of a shift in how we view and think. And I would say that a large percentage of our people have responded. I’ve always said this, if you raise the bar for people, if you raise expectations for people. People will respond.  – Rob Parker
  

Information & Links

• Rob Parker – LinkedIn
  
• Town at Trillith outside of Fayetteville, Ga – near Atlanta
  
• Chick-fil-a
  
• Truett Cathy – books
  

Closing Questions

What have you read that we should read?

• Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance by Bob Buford
  

Who do you know that we should know?

• Search out Chick-Fil-A’s corporate purpose, read that, and then understand the success that they’ve had.
  

Where have you been that we should go?

• I’m not going to give you a specific place, I’m going to challenge you to travel in general. And I really wish I could remember the quote, but there is a Mark Twain quote, that says that travel, it is absolutely the antidote to racism, bigotry, and half a dozen other things that you can think of. That going to where people are, experiencing life, experiencing the world differently, is absolutely an antidote to those.
  

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” – Mark Twain