Healthcare Continues Big Suburban Push
Healthcare is infiltrating the suburbs. Whether they’re building new large campuses or leasing dozens of retail spaces, hospital systems in Houston are expanding their footprints around the metro. That’s one reason we’re excited to host Bisnow’s 5th Annual Healthcare Real Estate event April 23.
Real estate and the suburban push play a crucial strategic role in Texas Children’s Hospital’s primary goal: providing care to children, no matter where they are or what they can pay. SVP of facilities services Pete Dawson (a panelist at our event) tells us the geographic distribution of TCH facilities provides services to people who can’t, or don’t want to, drive into the Texas Medical Center. TCH’s biggest suburban developments have been new campuses—the TCH West Campus in Katy has been up and running since 2011, and still has 25 acres left to develop. (There’s no timeline on that, Pete says.)
TCH’s next community hospital campus is under construction on 23 acres in The Woodlands. That 600k SF hospital will open mid-2017. No other new campuses are envisioned, but Pete says “other locations may be considered” as Houston grows. TCH occupies a number of smaller properties throughout the metro. The system has almost 49 Texas Children's Pediatrics primary care locations, including three "medical home" facilities serving patients in underinsured neighborhoods. (Many of these children previously received their primary care through ER visits, something TCH wants to prevent.) The real estate behind these facilities is varied but almost exclusively leased, Pete tells us.
TCH also has five larger (15k to 30k SF) community Health Centers staffed by specialists and subspecialists from the TMC campus traveling out for clinic days. The largest is unique for the system—it was a lease-to-own build-to-suit in Cy-Fair. (It’s hard to say if TCH would ever do that model again, Pete says.) Additional TCH Health Centers may be developed but there's nothing specific on the books. Since TCH opened the Pavilion for Women in the TMC, expanding into maternal/fetal medicine, the Texas Children’s Health Plan has opened two specialty outpatient Centers for Children and Women. (A 60k SF one in Westwood Shopping Center, pictured, just opened in November.) Other TCH community facilities include recently added maternal fetal medicine and urgent care clinics.
This week Trammell Crow is expecting to receive the certificate of occupancy for a 100k SF MOB on Memorial Hermann’s Katy campus, the first of five prototype Memorial Hermann buildings in the suburbs. Trammell Crow principal Davis Griffin (another panelist) says the developer also has an identical one delivering this fall in Sugar Land, and Memorial Hermann is also building them in Cypress, Pearland and The Woodlands.
These can look different than their Inner Loop brethren, Davis (pictured hiking in Argentina) tells us. Memorial Hermann’s new ambulatory facilities are tiltwall, something you’d probably never see in the TMC. But they’re faster and cheaper to build while still providing great quality, a big plus in helping the system in its mission. Davis expects to see more and more of these types of buildings as health systems seek to offer services closer to where their patients live and at lower costs. One system alone is considering as many as six ambulatory care centers in the next several years. Come hear more about this trend and more at our 5th Annual Bisnow Houston Healthcare Real Estate Summit on April 23 at the Westin Oaks starting at 7am. (Sign up here.)
