When his parents divorced in 1937, Johan Lie-Nielsen was 2 years old. At 4, he was sent from his Boston home to Norway to live with his paternal grandparents. At six, after Germany had crushed Norway, Johan was returned to the U.S., eventually ending up in Ambrose, Georgia, where his father made a living as a traveling salesman. By age 12, according to his family, he had learned English, changed his name to John and had started running away from his stepmother.
John Lie-Nielsen grew up to found Johnstown Properties, based in Atlanta, at one time one of the country’s largest apartment management companies. But “in a sense, he never had a home as a child,” said his son, John Lie-Nielsen. “One of the amazing things was that he was able to create stable homes and was the father figure to eight children. He was our anchor.”
John Douglas Lie-Nielsen died May 31 at age 90 in Bradenton, Florida, surrounded by his family. The cause of death was multiple myeloma, his son said.
As a teenager, he left South Georgia for good to attend the private Berry High School in Rome, Georgia, working on the school’s farm to pay his way. He then segued to Berry College, where a teacher suggested he attend Emory University. He held several jobs while in college, including teaching in an Arthur Murray Dance Studio, and graduated from Emory with an economics degree, according to his son.
A friend from California suggested he come West, so Lie-Nielsen headed to the Bay Area. He opened three dance studios, but they didn’t do well. Instead, he began working in hospital administration, scrounging together enough money to buy a small dilapidated house in Sacramento. He did all the house repairs himself, from the foundation to the roof, the sinks to the soffits, and sold the house at a profit.
Other purchases, of houses and small apartments, followed. A California company called Consolidated Capital hired Lie-Nielsen. He formed a unit to optimize management of the company’s apartment communities, “but he saw they weren’t good operators of the properties they were buying,” said son John Lie-Nielsen. The elder Lie-Nielsen started Johnstown American in 1964 to manage the Consolidated Capital properties.
In the late 1970s, Lie-Nielsen moved to Atlanta, convinced it was ripe for growth, and moved Johnstown American as well, his son said. The firm peaked in the 1980s, when it was managing more than 160,000 rental apartment and condo units across the country. It also handled industrial buildings and shopping centers, owned a mortgage banking firm and a carpeting supplier. Lie-Nielsen was profiled in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The New York Times.
Credit: AJC
Credit: AJC
What made the firm different, his son said, “was his attention to detail. My father turned management into a standardized process, with operating manuals for everything.” The on-site manager had to buy an apple pie every day and bake it in the oven before prospective tenants toured a housing unit.
Lie-Nielsen introduced “The Little Buddy,” a customized leasing property system that told him, on a daily basis, such things as the number of units rented and who was paying rent when. He hired the managers of the buildings he managed, the leasing agents and the maintenance crews, at one time employing more than 10,000 people.
He sold Johnstown American in 1988 for $13 million, his son said, to Southmark Corporation, which renamed it Consolidated Cos., and moved the headquarters to Dallas. Months later, with Lie-Nielsen no longer at the helm, the company filed for bankruptcy.
A few years later, in 1993, Lie-Nielsen founded HandyTrac Key Control, which controls key access to apartment units. He remained CEO of the Alpharetta-based company until two months before he died.
My father “never stopped working,” son John Lie-Nielsen said. In his 70s, the elder Lie-Nielsen started Water Signal, technology that could detect leaks and keep track of water usage rates for apartment building owners. He sold that business at age 88.
“It was hard to live up to his standards,” son John Lie-Nielsen said. “His whole thing was that if you commit to something, you do it well. You didn’t want to test my dad.”
John Lie-Nielsen is survived by his spouse, Debra Lie-Nielsen; his sisters Annella and Linda Lie-Nielsen, brothers Erik, Charlie and Tom Lie-Nielsen and Richard De Courcy Hinds; his children Ilya Lie-Nielsen (Dane Mohl), Bo Lie-Nielsen, Richard (Lucie) Lie-Nielsen, John (Darling) Lie-Nielsen, Shana Lie-Nielsen, Ryan Keim (Annette), Kerry Keim and Brent Keim (Cassidy); and 11 grandchildren.
There will be a funeral Mass June 26, 11 a.m. to noon, at Lord of Life Lutheran Church, 5390 McGinnis Ferry Road, Alpharetta.
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