HCA 116-Property Disposition Reaps $250 Mil, Minority Interest in Buyer

DALLAS-Thirty-two Texas medical office buildings are part of a 116-property sell-off by Nashville-based HCA, which is reaping $250 million and minority ownership in the buyer’s company.

The buyer is MedCap Properties LLC, a private company formed by healthcare operator First Union Capital Partners and unidentified investors. The sales roster, which spans 16 states with portfolio clusters in Texas, Tennessee and Florida, represents about one-third of HCA’s medical office portfolio, most of which are wholly owned and primarily abut hospitals. There are 24 Tennessee facilities and 18 Florida buildings on the disposition list.

“Very little will change,” an HCA source tells GlobeSt.com. The disposition is being done so that “hospital CEOs are not burdened with managing a building,” the source says. “We thought it was better if the hospital CEO could focus on the hospital.” Practitioners’ offices, rents and services will stay the same, says the source, stressing all that is changing is the owner.

Houston is taking the biggest hit, with seven medical office structures being sold to MedCap. Three buildings are situated along Fannin Street, two along Richmond Avenue and two along the East Freeway. Next in line is Conroe, located 41 miles north of Houston, with five medical office structures along Medical Center Boulevard now in the MedCap portfolio. The Corpus Christi region has four properties being sold: two along Alamena Street and one each on South Padre Island and FM 624. Two medical office buildings along Alton Gloor in Brownsville have been sold, as has one in El Paso along N. Oregon Street.

Thirteen properties are located in North Texas. Three office buildings along Booth Calloway Road in North Richland Hills have been sold and two each along Matlock Road in Arlington and McKinney’s Medical Center Drive. One each have been disposed of at the Medical Center Dallas along Forest Lane; Irving at N. MacArthur Boulevard; Ft. Worth’s Plaza Medical at 8th Avenue; Plano at W. 15th Street; Lewisville along W. Main Street; and Medical Center Denton.

MedCap is structured so that it will now focus on acquisition, development and management of the system’s medical office buildings. “This strategic transaction will enhance the operations of these medical office buildings and ultimately benefit the physician tenants,” says Howard Patterson, HCA’s vice president of real estate.

The $250 million in revenue, the source tells GlobeSt.com, will be applied to HCA’s debt- reduction strategy and a $1.3-billion fund that has been earmarked for community use in its 16-state system. Some of the revenue will be put into HCA’s general operations fund, he says.