The office building will be home to TMH Physician Partners-Primary Care, an urgent care center, an ambulatory surgery center and cardiology services. The Bay County Economic Alliance expects the medical office to be complete in the next few months. Meanwhile, the city plans to have its first in-patient hospital built in the next three years.
Although many healthcare real estate (HRE) professionals correctly predicted that medical office building (MOB) sales would remain strong during the COVID-19 pandemic, they did express some concern that construction numbers would fall as providers would be forced to focus on myriad other concerns than moving into new buildings.
But that hasn’t been the case so far.
“Medical office construction has remained very strong throughout COVID, both in terms of starts and completions,” said Hilda Flower Martin, a principal with the HRE research and data firm, during a Jan. 26 Revista webcast. “Completions slowed a little bit towards the end of the year (2020), but starts remain pretty much in line (with past years), as there was about 20.9 million square feet of MOB space started as of the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2020 on a trailing 12-month basis (TTM). The MOB projects being built are typically well pre-leased and continue to get larger.”
Source: HREI
Although medical office buildings (MOBs) are once again showing their strength as an investment and ownership product during the COVID-19 pandemic, some professionals involved in the sector have expressed concern that there could be a slowdown in the development of such facilities in the next couple of years.
Although such a concern could indeed prove to be true, professionals with some of the MOB sector’s largest and best-known development firms, as well as full-service healthcare real estate HRE) firms that provide development services, recently expressed that they are remaining as busy as ever, and should be for at least the next year or longer.
HREI™ Editorial Advisory Board members say the number of requests for proposals (RFPs) and the level of development activity during the COVID-19 pandemic have come as a pleasant surprise, and they say they expect 2021 to be another strong year.
Source: HREi
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