JV Chooses Med Convert for 50,000-SF Office

DOWNERS GROVE, IL-A partnership of ASA Properties LLC and Stage Equity Partners LLC plans to convert a 50,000-square-foot office building here at the southwest corner of Highland and 31st St. into a medical office building. The 25-year-old facility at 1001 W. 31st St. is vacant, and had been listed for sale for $5.7 million or for lease to a corporate user for about $8.75 per square foot, according Sperry Van Ness marketing materials. However, the private owner and the partnership have decided to turn the building into medical use, says Mitchel Greenberg with ASA.

Greenberg tells GlobeSt.com that he believes the property is better suited for medical use. “You are hearing about these companies that say, oh, let’s make that site medical, like that’s supposed to make the sky open up and become sunny,” Greenberg says. “But this property is only a few blocks from Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital and near Elmhurst Hospital. With medical properties you want to be right on campus or very close, and you can’t get much closer than this, there’s no contiguous space like this even around here.”

He says that one reason the office became vacant was it didn’t have enough parking, so the partnership is putting a plan before Downers Grove leaders to build a parking deck. Former tenants of the building include Castrol Industrial North America Inc., F&I Administration Solutions and Universal Bancorp Inc., which had its license revoked by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation in February 2008.

Greenberg says he’s had some inquiries from the “logical groups” of medical users. The building needs to have at least one tenant that will take half the building, he says. There is an increased demand for medical office space, in part due to the new health care bill signed by President Barack Obama, which Greenberg says should bring more demand by consumers to private and public medical offices. His firm just completed a 60,000-square-foot medical office building in Buffalo Grove that is 40% leased by Affinity Healthcare.