A proposed 71-acre, 200-bed waterfront hospital campus in Palmetto Bay won’t be built anytime soon, with a drawn-out court battle expected between the village and the intended developer.

The dispute boils down to what the property’s zoning allowed prior to its purchase, as well as whether zoning changes by the village after the land purchase are an encroachment on the property owner’s rights.

Luxcom Builders bought the land from Florida Power & Light last December for $33 million with appropriate zoning for a hospital, said Michael Moskowitz, Luxcom’s attorney.

However, Mr. Moskowitz alleges, the Village of Palmetto Bay subsequently changed the zoning to one home an acre because council members opposed the project.

“It’s our belief that they did so intentionally to derail the project because they, the village, and perhaps certain citizens did not want a hospital campus to be constructed on this site,” Mr. Moskowitz said.

As a result, he is saying that Luxcom will sue the village to have the rezoning overturned. But beyond that, he said, Luxcom will sue the village for $50 million for damages to his client under the Bert J. Harris Private Property Rights Protection Act.

Mr. Moskowitz said Luxcom is willing to hash things out with the village but the village has thus far not cooperated.

“If the village wants to be constructive, and wants to be reasonable, there is always a method to reach a constructive resolution, but so far that has not occurred,” he said. “We would love that opportunity. They haven’t done so, therefore we are going to court.”

The village council, however, doesn’t believe the property was zoned to allow for a hospital, according to Vice Mayor John DuBois. He said that prior to its rezoning, the land had had institutional land use and interim zoning.

“There was no use that they were entitled to other than continuing to use it as a power plant without us changing the zoning on it,” Mr. DuBois said.

Mr. DuBois said he was the one who drafted the legislation to properly define what was allowed on the property. He said the legislation was drafted about a year prior to Luxcom buying the land – and had passed first reading – after FPL had bounced around the idea of having a large development on the property.

“The intent was to say ‘turn down your power plant, [FPL]. Stop going around town telling people you’re going to put an 800-home development there, which is not going to happen,’” He said.

Mr. DuBois continued, “That was our message, because that is what they were doing. They were going around before this stuff was zoned trying to make everybody believe there was going to be this beautiful super high-density development there, and it was starting to panic the residents, and that was part of the reason I wrote the legislation to go ahead and give it a land-use designation and give it a zoning designation in the absence of an application.”

Luxcom CEO and Chairman Oscar Barbara said in a press statement that the hospital would help serve Miami-Dade’s growing population and that “this new hospital will help address that need by serving the citizens of Palmetto Bay and the surrounding areas.”

Mr. Moskowitz said, “We believe that Palmetto Bay is an ideal location for a general hospital. Right now, with the current population numbers, if you look at the hospital and the services area, there’s one bed for every 307 residents. We believe that there is an absolute need for another hospital.”

When the project was first proposed, anyone interested in building a hospital would have had to obtain a certificate of need in order to house inpatient beds. However, that provision was scrapped during the most recent Florida legislative session.

The waterfront property is at 6525 SW 152nd St. If built, the state-of-the-art hospital there would feature about 200 beds, a 24-hour emergency room, an emergency helipad and an emergency dock.

 

Source:  Miami Today

Optimal Outcomes LLC, a St. Petersburg-based developer that specializes in medical office and related projects, has acquired a 5.11-acre tract in Fort Myers.

The company bought the site at 14537-14543 Global Parkway for $1.3 million, property records show. The seller was an affiliate of Colson Associates Inc., of Chicago.

Commercial real estate brokerage Lee & Associates’ principals Bob Johnston, Jerry Messonnier and Derek Bornhorst negotiated the transaction.

In Fort Myers, the company previously developed a 50,000-square-foot administrative building for Florida Cancer Specialists and is currently developing a 46,000-square-foot medical office in Lakewood Ranch, in master developer Schroeder-Manatee Ranch’s 265-acre CORE business park.

 

Source: Business Observer

St. Petersburg, Fla.-based St. Anthony’s Hospital plans to build a $152 million, 90-bed patient tower, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

The four-story, 143-square-foot tower will house cardiology suites, inpatient dialysis units, preadmission testing services and nel classrooms. With the addition, the hospital will have a total of 448 beds.

Construction is slated to begin next year, and the facility is expected to open in 2022.

St. Anthony’s Hospital is owned by Tampa Bay-based BayCare.

Source: Becker’s Hospital Review

A Florida-based developer has acquired a 25,634-square-foot, multi-tenant medical office building in Tampa, Fla., from a group of local investors.

The asset traded through a 1031 exchange for $8.6 million and at a 7.44 percent cap rate. Director James Ullrich, Senior Director Jeff Matulis and Associate Michael Macchia of Stan Johnson Co. worked on behalf of the seller, while the company’s Houston office represented the buyer.

Located at 4531 S. Dale Mabry Highway in a dense residential area, the asset is close to important developments in the South Tampa submarket, such as the Gandy Bridge overpass project or the waterfront housing development in the Westshore Marina District. According to Ullrich, the lot is one of the deepest on South Dale Mabry. Tampa Sports Academy anchors the property, occupying roughly half of the building, while the remaining space is leased to three tenants on triple net leases.

 

Source:  CPE

The medical office market in Jacksonville, Florida continues to improve as vacancies among medical office buildings have reached their lowest point in the past 10 years, at roughly 5.8%. This is around 280 basis points below the metro average for all office inventory. Vacancy levels are not expected to rise much, as construction in the region has slowed.

Medical office properties in Jacksonville have generally performed well this cycle, as demand for this subset of office space has been increasing. While medical offices comprise merely 15% of total office space in the metro, it has accounted for around one-third of office deliveries over the past decade.

Overall, medical office properties are typically built adjacent to major healthcare facilities and hospitals, creating clusters of healthcare services and tenants. For example, developers have built several medical offices surrounding St. Vincent’s Medical Center’s Southside campus. Around 76,000 square feet of space is either underway or has opened in the area since 2010. The largest building, at 7021 A.C. Skinner Pkwy., is home to the Jacksonville Surgery Center’s 21,200-square-foot location.

With minimal construction activity compared to previous years, year-over-year rent growth is around 4.5% in the medical office subset. These facilities are generally more standard-built as opposed to the sprawling office parks found in Jacksonville’s top-performing Southside submarket. Thus, rents are more on par with Class B properties in Jacksonville, with gross asking rents of around $20 per square foot.

An aging population, and the popularity of outpatient services, has helped fuel demand for medical office buildings in recent years. In Jacksonville, population growth among those aged 65 years or older has increased faster than any other age segment over the past five years. On the economic side, jobs numbers in the education and health services industry have grown at a faster pace than almost any other industry in the past 10 years, behind only professional and business services. These demand drivers are expected to remain vital pieces of the demographic and economic profile of the region in the coming years.

 

Source: CoStar