Hospitals Keep MOB Projects Moving

The 85,000-square-foot facility is on the campus of Florida Hospital Kissimmee and is scheduled to open in the fall of 2009. Seavest has secured financing for the project, called the HealthPlex at Florida Hospital medical office building, and is partnering with Lillibridge on the construction of the building at 2450 North Orange Blossom Trail in Kissimmee. Seavest will develop and own the building, where physician tenants have participated in the ownership.

The 60,000-square-foot East Orlando project will be called the new Surgical Medical Plaza and will include a 13,000-square-foot ambulatory surgery center as the anchor tenant in the new three-story foot MOB. The building is scheduled for completion in the fall.

In the case of the HealthPlex at Florida Hospital project, the new development will include a medical office building and outpatient center that will bring expanded medical services to the residents of Kissimmee. Hospital officials and the development team point out that, because of increasing healthcare demands in the growing suburb of Orlando, more medical office space is needed on the Kissimmee campus.

Seavest will own both buildings with Lillibridge as its development partner.The two projects come at a time when Lillibridge and Seavest are both involved in a number of healthcare construction projects. As reported on GlobeSt.com recently, the Methodist Medical Center of Illinois has retained Lillibridge as project manager in the development of a $350 million campus expansion that will include a 180-bed hospital addition, a community pavilion and a parking deck.Construction is planned to begin early next year, with an expected completion date in late 2012.

Those projects join others around the country that include two on the campus of Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, CA. The hospital recently started work on a $40 million project that will add an 80,000-square-foot, four-story building to expand the hospital's emergency department. The project, expected to take three years to complete, follows the recent completion of a $170 million, 237,734-square-foot building called the West Tower that is part of a master-planned hospital expansion that began in 1986.