Lifetime Fitness Ops Lead Turns Facilities Into Strategic Assets for Retention and Revenue

Facilities management has changed. Long viewed as an unavoidable overhead cost—a support function to be endured—that perception is shifting, especially since 2020. For many leaders, the new focus is on integrating facilities with the business, not just working for it. The goal is to use the physical environment to directly influence outcomes like customer satisfaction and employee retention. This change places the focus less on aesthetics and more on shaping environments to improve retention, drive revenue, and mitigate risk.

This approach is exemplified by the work of leaders like Thomas Morimoto, a Senior Facilities Operations Leader for luxury athletic club Lifetime Fitness, managing multi-site portfolios exceeding 1.5M square feet and annual budgets over $30M. Concurrently serving as a Company Commander in the Army National Guard, he brings a unique dimension of leadership to his role. For Morimoto, the distinction between running a building and leveraging it as a strategic asset is the key to unlocking its true business potential.

“There’s a big difference between operating a facility and leveraging it for the business," he says. "A lot of people know how to keep a building running. Leveraging facilities means planning one to five years out and integrating it into how the business operates.” Take Disney, as an example. The magic of the experience is what drives people to spend thousands. The "magic" is actually a meticulously managed environment, Morimoto explains, where every possible customer interaction is accounted for. From design to park cleanliness, Disney delivers a high bar for customer experience and facilities management that can serve as inspiration for other facilities leaders.

• A feast for the senses: This means systematically engineering an experience that aligns with brand standards, a core tenet of modern international facility management. Under this mindset, every detail, from engineering to cleanliness, must uphold the brand's promise. "What is commonly called the janitorial staff, I see as being in charge of the five senses: smell, touch, taste, sight, and hearing," he says. "I have my engineering side of the house where it's about functionality. Does it work? Is it branded to our standard? For a luxury brand, everything has to be luxury style."

Such an integration is often grounded in a foundation of long-range financial planning and risk mitigation. Morimoto stresses the importance of moving away from reactive problem-solving toward proactive planning. To do this, his teams employ modern asset management tools, including a Computerized Maintenance Management System to execute a robust preventative maintenance plan. "The biggest mistake in facility management is being purely reactive. It traps you where you're just waiting for something to break. By building one- to five-year plans, we can leverage accounting tools to capitalize a major expense. That foresight is how you avoid the sudden reality of being $100,000 underwater," he says.

• Dollars in the drain: The application of AI sharpens this proactive stance, enabling leaders to forecast budgets and intervene in real time. "We recently used AI to measure water loss when the building was empty and discovered we were losing 8,000 gallons in a single day. The system alerted us to the leaks and allowed us to pinpoint their exact locations," he explains. "That small water leak would have cost us $20,000 to $40,000 a year. This is a perfect example of how a facilities leader can use a tech-centered approach and AI tools to show their value and integrate with the business."

In Morimoto's view, what elevates a leader from a tactical manager to a true executive is the ability to move beyond the day-to-day and engage in strategic, long-range planning in the language of the business. "I meet many facility managers who are excellent operators who know their building inside and out, but their planning horizon is often focused on the past, simply recalling when an asset was last replaced. To get a seat at the executive table, you must shift to forward-looking, strategic planning and create a one- to five-year business plan."

This kind of long-range planning is also becoming a key advantage in attracting and retaining talent. With companies like Microsoft establishing return-to-office mandates, the quality of the workplace is a key factor in any successful RTO strategy. Morimoto points to the Life Time Work initiative as a capstone example of facilities addressing this C-suite challenge, particularly as companies grapple with aging infrastructure. The initiative offers inspiring workspaces that serve as a "creative outlet" for executives and employees from companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Best Buy. "Retention is how you build and scale a business. You can't scale if people are constantly leaving because they don't enjoy their environment. The facility is a huge part of that. Investing in the physical environment directly increases retention, which is what allows a business to scale."