Healthcare: Research Medical Center Brookside Campus could get $100M housing, office project
by Rob Roberts for Kansas City Business Journal
A former official of the Economic Development Corp. of Kansas City is leading a partnership proposing to develop roughly $100 million worth of senior apartments and commercial buildings on the Research Medical Center Brookside Campus.
Kelley Hrabe, a former development manager for the EDC who also served as director of development for Walton Construction LLC, is the managing partner of Sonoma Development Partners LLC.
Sonoma Development was created to develop the Brookside Campus project, which will include 266 senior housing units on 13.5 acres along Troost Avenue and Rockhill Road between 65th and 68th streets.
Hrabe, now president of The Net Giver, a senior housing development and management company based on the Brookside campus, said Sonoma Development has a contract to buy the 13.5-acre site from Nashville-based HCA Inc., which owns the outpatient campus and several hospitals in the region.
He would not disclose the purchase price but said it was part of the estimated $45 million project cost for the proposed market-rate senior housing development, which would include 90 assisted-living units, 136 independent-living units and 40 units for the memory-impaired.
A planned second phase of development would include new office buildings on the southern side of the 37-acre Brookside Campus, between Troost and Holmes Road.
The land for that roughly $50 million phase is not under contract.
Hrabe said Sonoma Development signed a contract for the first-phase property in October that gave the partnership 18 months to put together financing and receive a certificate of need for the assisted-living units from Missouri.
Hrabe said he expects to raise 20 percent to 25 percent of the $45 million first-phase cost from equity contributed by private investors he is working with. He hopes to have the equity and debt financing in place in time to start demolition of five existing buildings on the property within the year. Construction would span the next two years, he said.
“The good news is that even in this (depressed real estate) market, there’s a lot of cash on the sidelines, and there is unequivocally a demand for senior housing,” Hrabe said.
Sonoma Development plans to submit plans for the senior-housing project to the city within the next few weeks and would seek some type of city tax incentives to help keep rental rates affordable, Hrabe said.
The Net Giver, which emphasizes sustainable projects and donates 10 percent of its proceeds to communities it serves, probably would manage the apartments.
Hrabe said the apartments would be the first development project completed by The Net Giver or an affiliated partnership. However, he said, Net Giver and a joint-venture partner have 1,015 units of senior housing under management.
The apartments proposed at the Brookside Campus would be next to the former Baptist-Lutheran Medical Center tower that HCA acquired in 2003.
In 2007, the property was renamed the Research Medical Center Brookside Campus, and the tower became an outpatient-only facility.
It and an adjacent pavilion continue to house emergency care and other outpatient services, which are expected to remain on the site.
