Delray Marketplace Could Get Medical Office Building Despite Cap On Commercial Space — How Is That Possible?

/in , /by

It’s the second time in less than a month that the planning commission accommodated a builder whose project was jeopardized by rules designed to limit development in the Ag Reserve.

The County Planning Commission voted 7-6 earlier this month to initiate a change in the county’s growth plan to increase the commercial cap in the Agricultural Reserve — a move is designed to allow a 13,000-square-foot, medical office building on a narrow, two-acre lot at Delray Marketplace.

This marked the second time in less than a month that the planning commission accommodated a builder whose project was jeopardized by rules designed to limit development in the Ag Reserve. In early January, the commission voted to initiate a change to the growth plan that will consider self-storage facilities as noncommercial and, therefore, exempt self-storage from the commercial cap.

“How many more times are we going to increase the cap or make exceptions?” Planning Commissioner Dagmar Brahs asked her colleagues.

She “implored” them to vote against the project at Delray Marketplace.

“At least wait until Atlantic Avenue is widened from State Road 7 to Lyons Road,” Brahs said.

“Traffic congestion now is ridiculous,” Commissioner Spencer Siegel said. “However, approving the project was a way to force county commissioners to decide whether an in-depth review of Ag Reserve rules should be conducted.”

The planning commission vote to “initiate” the change to increase the commercial cap will be taken up by the county commission on February 5. County commissioners, if they support the planning commission, will eventually have to hold public hearings.

The lot is on Atlantic Avenue sandwiched in between the Marketplace to the east and a kennel currently under construction to the west. It is a preserve parcel, which means nothing can be built on it. So the builder found another two-acre lot in the Ag Reserve that will be preserved in exchange for allowing the property at the Marketplace to be developed.

Siegel noted that the existing preserve parcel at the Marketplace is idle land and the new preserve parcel, about a mile away, is better suited for agriculture. Other commissioners said they were frustrated at the number of preserve parcels that are not being used for agricultural purposes such as the one at the Marketplace. County planners said it should not have been approved as a preserve parcel.

To accommodate the builder, the county’s growth plan needs to be amended. Staff called the change “inappropriate” and an effort to “circumvent” the growth plan. The lot is only 33 feet wide by approximately 670 feet deep. Staff said approval triggers policy issues such as “piecemeal development.”

Jennifer Morton, the builder’s agent, told the commission that there is a need for more medical office space on Atlantic Avenue. The builder, Garret Bender of Delray Beach, has already opened a medical office complex just east of the Marketplace on Atlantic Avenue. It is fully leased, and Bender already has a physician interested in operating in his Marketplace building, according to Morton.

Morton noted that her client’s project will increase the current cap of 1,015,000 square feet by just 1.3%. The county has already increased the cap three times since 2016, adding another 94,000 square feet of commercial space during that time. When the Ag Reserve rules were written in 2002, the cap was set at 750,000 square feet. Commercial development is restricted to within a quarter-mile of either Atlantic Avenue or Boynton Beach Boulevard.

Morton said if the commissioners decided against raising the commercial cap, she proposed they get around the cap by considering the medical office building “commercial low office” and then exempt that category from being considered commercial. That option was not taken up by the planning commission.

Voting to increase the cap and allow the medical office building to be built were Siegel, Edwin Ferguson, Kiley Harper Larsen, Jim Knight, Marcia Hayden, Angella Vann and Eric Royal.

Voting against increasing the cap were Brahs, Barbara Roth, David Dinin, Lori Vinikoor, Alex Garcia, and Evan Rosenberg.

 

Source: Palm Beach Post

700-Foot Vertical Medical City Being Planned On Biscayne Boulevard, Valued At $2.1B

/in , , /by

An Orlando company submitted plans to the Federal Aviation Administration last week for a 700-foot downtown Miami project called Vertical Medical City Biscayne.

The application was filed on January 22. According to the application, the project will be built in the 1600 block of Biscayne Boulevard. Construction is scheduled to begin in January 2021.

An affiliate of Ponte Health Properties, LLC is the developer. A press release from Ponte in October 2019 said that Vertical Medical City Biscayne will be built in the Bayfront Park vicinity in downtown Miami. The project will be valued at $2.1 billion and include 90+ stories of development, the release said.

Ponte is also planning similar projects in Orlando and Chicago. All Vertical Medical City locations are planned to include residential Independent Living, Memory Care Units, Urgent Care, Medical Office and Outpatient Surgery and Services Spaces, Urban Farming, and Research and Development spaces as part of a complex mixed-used geriatric-focused project, according to Ponte.

Source: The Next MIami

Two Years After $88 Million Buy, Nicklaus Children’s Wants To Sell Miami Medical Center

/in /by

Nicklaus Children’s Hospital plans to sell the failed Miami Medical Center, a specialty hospital that Nicklaus Children’s bought just over two years ago for $88 million, after deciding to focus its growth strategies on more outpatient clinics and its own Coral Terrace campus.

The decision to sell the building follows a year of financial instability, layoffs and administrative changes. At the time of the purchase, in December 2017, questions surrounded the financial underpinnings of the deal. That included questions about the nonprofit Nicklaus Children’s financial interests in the for-profit ventures associated with the Miami Medical Center. Miami Medical Center, located near Miami International Airport, closed in October 2017.

Matthew Love, who took over as chief executive officer on an interim basis in June last year, also announced this week that he will begin serving as the hospital’s permanent CEO. Love said he couldn’t answer questions about the relationship between the nonprofit hospital and the for-profit ventures because much of the arrangement predated his time with the hospital.

Before the bankruptcy filing, one of Miami Medical Center’s biggest investors was Nicklaus Children’s, which served as shareholder, lender and manager of the hospital through a venture called Miami Hospital Holdings. In March 2018, the company that operated Miami Medical Center filed for Chapter 11 reorganization, listing $21.4 million in assets and $67.3 million in liabilities.

Love said the hospital has retained an outside consulting firm to help with the sale, and that Nicklaus Children’s board signed off on the decision to sell. The CEO declined to list a specific price for the facility but said Nicklaus Children’s would sell the building for the “best price we can get.”

“The sale makes sense with Nicklaus Children’s growth strategy,” Love said. “When you talk about expansion and growth, it doesn’t always have to be brick and mortar. Miami Medical Center was right down the street. What I’m not really interested in is replicating high-end services — those are expensive.”

Sal Barbera, a former healthcare executive who now teaches healthcare administration at Florida Atlantic University, said he thinks the decision to sell the building goes beyond growth strategies and has more to do with the hospital’s current financial condition.

“They need to unload that asset, they need the cash,” Barbera said. “They didn’t buy it that long ago.”

In 2014, Nicklaus Children’s — when it was still an investor — signed on to guarantee up to $70 million of financial obligations related to Miami Medical Center. When the private hospital defaulted on its debts, Nicklaus Children’s paid a total of $14 million in 2017 and 2018, according to an analysis by Fitch Ratings.

During 2018, Nicklaus Children’s also funded $7 million of Miami Medical Center’s operating costs as part of its obligations. Miami Medical Center’s bankruptcy was finalized in January 2019.

The company that invested in Miami Medical Center was partly owned by a for-profit corporation whose officers were made up of Nicklaus Children’s board members and executives, including former CEO Narendra Kini, former CFO Timothy Birkenstock and April Andrews-Singh, a senior vice president and general counsel.

Love, the current CEO, said he is hopeful that the Florida Legislature’s deregulation of hospital building guidelines will make the facility attractive to out-of-state healthcare providers or providers from elsewhere in the state.

“What I’m interested in us doing is focusing on the fundamentals,” Love said. “We’re the best pediatric healthcare provider in Florida, and we need to focus on that. That’s who we are.”

 

Source: Miami Herald