$75M Gift From Billionaire Will Fund New Medical Office In West Palm Beach
The world’s second-richest woman donated $75M for the construction of a medical center in West Palm Beach.
The Julia Koch Family Foundation, run by the widow of billionaire libertarian businessman David Koch, provided the donation to help build the NYU Langone Health Ambulatory Care Center. The gift comes a month after the New York University's health system acquired the site at 324 Datura St.
The donation will fund the construction of an eight-story, 77K SF medical center less than a half-mile from an existing NYU medical building that opened in 2017.
The ambulatory care center will have space for 50 physicians and aims to serve 150,000 patients each year with a focus on internal medicine, primary care, oncology and pain management, according to a release. It will include two operating rooms, two endoscopy suites and eight physical therapy bays.
“Palm Beach County is full of New Yorkers, many of whom now live there year-round,” Kenneth Langone, chair of the NYU Langone Board of Trustees, said in a statement. “For the rest of us it’s a home away from home — with one big deficit: a lack of comprehensive care from the full spectrum of NYU Langone doctors, who offer unmatched quality in every specialty.”
New York University paid $33M for the 0.6-acre property in January, property records indicate. It purchased the property from Boca Raton-based real estate firm Morning Calm Management after securing city approval to build the medical center on the site.
A 69K SF office building built in 1950 that Morning Calm paid $10.6M to acquire in 2021 currently sits on the site.
NYU Langone opened its first medical office in West Palm Beach in 2017 at 101 N. Clematis St., near the Datura Street site. The primary care and surgical center was renamed the Julia Koch Family Ambulatory Care Center following the recent donation from Koch, a part-time Palm Beach resident. NYU Langone also has a clinical office in Delray Beach.
The healthcare provider has been planning a major expansion in West Palm Beach for a couple of years and had come close to leasing around 100K SF in the East Tower, an office building slated to be built on Hibiscus Street by New York-based Related Cos., The Palm Beach Post reported.
The donation from Koch comes a year after she established the family foundation. Koch had a net worth of $59B last year, according to Forbes, and along with her three adult children owns 42% of Koch Industries, the industrial conglomerate that is the second-largest privately held company in the U.S. behind Cargill.
Koch is also the president of the David H. Koch Foundation, which was founded in 1981 and named for her husband, who died in 2019. That philanthropic organization has donated $4.4M to NYU Langone, according to the Post.
“Since our arrival in 2017, demand continues to grow in Florida for the exceptional care our teams are already known for in New York,” Robert Grossman, CEO of NYU Langone and dean of NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said in a statement. “We are excited to meet that need, and Julia Koch and her family have been with us every step of the way.”
