Centerra Medical Office Building filling up rapidly

LOVELAND – Medical Center of the Rockies opened to great fanfare in February, but another lesser-known portion of the complex in east Loveland is quietly but rapidly filling up with physicians and medical services offices.

The plainly dubbed “Medical Office Building,” connected to MCR on its south side, will be completely leased and mostly occupied by summer, according to Ron Keuhl, vice president for real estate for McWhinney Enterprises. McWhinney and the building’s first tenant, Heart Center of the Rockies, jointly own the land and three-story building through a limited liability corporation.

“We bought the parcel from Poudre Valley Health System to create an attached medical office building and we created a partnership so physicians could have ownership in that building if they chose,” Keuhl said.

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“We believe this is just the beginning of the growth of the medical community at Centerra,” he said.

One of the most recent additions to the building is an occupational health services clinic in a 3,000-square-foot leased space that PVHS will staff and move into next month. Jill Fitzgerald, program manager, said the clinic will be the third for PVHS and its first in Loveland.

Fitzgerald said the clinic, which will offer occupational health services, rehabilitation for work-related injuries and employment and drug testing services, aims to tap a growing number of employers in the Centerra area.

“Along with MCR, we’re looking at that population as potential growth for our services,” she said. “We have long thought there was a need in Loveland for at least one additional competitor.”

Location made sense

PVHS’ other occupational health clinics are in Fort Collins at 1025 Pennock St., just north of Poudre Valley Hospital, and at 1330 Oakridge Drive that opened in 2000. All three clinics will offer services from their respective locations, Fitzgerald said.

The newest location at Centerra will have a physical therapist and a physician board-certified in occupational medicine on duty Monday through Friday, she said. Initially, the physician load will be shared by William Basow and Michael Holthouser.

Fitzgerald said the Centerra location just makes sense for an occupational health services clinic. “I think like everyone else we’re looking at business being in a general expansion in that corridor, so for us we’re looking at continued growth in that area for our services,” she said.

Linda Gesick, PVHS vice president for hospital development, said PVHS is leasing other space in the medical office building. “We also did a master lease for another 6,500 square feet that we are subleasing to Front Range Brain and Spine and Surgical Specialties,” she said, noting that the two medical groups are part of the Level II trauma service that MCR offers.

Gesick said PVHS Home Medical Supply also has a “50-50” joint venture with Major Medical Supply to lease additional space in the building. Another 20,000 square feet is being held in reserve for a future ambulatory surgery center, she said.

Keuhl said the 15,000-square-foot Heart Center of the Rockies, its partner in the medical office building, invested in the project “before we even broke ground.” He said there are four additional physician groups – which he declined to identify – that plan to purchase an interest in the project this month. All proposals for space on the Centerra campus are being considered, he said.

“McWhinney has developed a strategy at Centerra to assist any physician’s real estate occupancy needs, whether they would like to lease, purchase a condo, do a build-to-suit sale, a build-to-suit lease (or) shared medical space,” he said.

90 percent leased

Keuhl said other occupants in the medical office building include Good Day Pharmacy with a 1,500-square-foot location on the first floor, the Imaging Center at Centerra with a 10,000-square-foot-plus presence, Northern Colorado Pulmonary Consultants with a 5,000-square-foot space, and the 5,000-square-foot Sleep Center of the Rockies.

Keuhl said the 80,000-square-foot building is about 90 percent leased with about 2,500 square feet left on the second floor and about 5,300 square feet on the third.

Keuhl noted that Centerra has other facilities on its campus that have medical space in them, including Rangeview II, which houses the Women’s Clinic of Northern Colorado and the Youth Clinic of Northern Colorado.

And more will follow, he said. “(MCR) has a large campus and we have been working on a master plan,” Keuhl said. “The next step is a 16-acre parcel directly south of MCR. We believe we can accommodate an additional 160,000 square feet on that parcel in four separate, two-story buildings.”

Other possibilities are also under consideration, he said. “We’re in discussion with groups that would like to have a stand-alone facility right along Rocky Mountain Avenue that would all be medical office buildings.”

Keuhl said interest in the medical office building and other potential medical building sites didn’t happen overnight, but after MCR opened on Feb. 14 “it’s really taken off.”

Still, the occupancy of the medical office building has been occurring at a rapid pace, with the building breaking ground in April of last year when it was more than 50 percent pre-leased, Keuhl said.

For McWhinney, the real estate market looks bright for a continued flow of physicians and medical services to the Centerra campus. Keuhl said he knows other doctors will want to locate an office near MCR at some point in the not-so-distant future.

“There are still a lot of physician’s groups saying we want to see how well the hospital does before we dive in,” he said.