Healthcare: Prime location is showing vital signs with Forest Park Medical Center
By JASON ROBERSON for The Dallas Morning News
If you’ve driven along the High Five interchange any time during the past few years, chances are you’ve caught a glimpse of the construction at Forest Lane and North Central Expressway.
Seemingly overnight, the 27-acre tract has transformed from a dilapidated car lot to a work site for a first-class medical center.
The sight of bulldozers, cranes and forklifts surrounding the Forest Park Medical Center is a bright spot in a struggling commercial real estate market.
But the investors and land developers defer accolades for their successful construction to fortunate timing and a growing health care industry.
The medical center is part of the Westmount Health Campus.
The site was originally a drive-in movie theater that opened in 1965. B.R. and Gordon McLendon, who also owned radio station KLIF, built the 20-acre, $1.5 million Gemini Drive-In, Dallas’ largest movie theater at the time.
But by the mid-1980s, the outdoor theater business declined and the McLendons tried unsuccessfully to sell the site before the ’80s real estate market collapsed.
For a brief time, it was a parking lot for an airport shuttle service.
AutoNation USA, a Florida-based chain of used car megastores, bought the land in 1996.
Other auto dealerships later occupied the land. But with the leases expiring, Gordon McClendon’s children decided to sell the property to Westmount Realty Capital LLC in December 2006.
“We bought the whole enchilada,” said Steve Kanoff, a partner with Westmount Realty Capital.
Prime location
Westmount had no definite plans for the land. The company simply thought it was a great location. The economy was better. No one predicted a recession or tight credit market, Kanoff said.
“We made a list of possible uses, but at the top of the list was medical, because of its proximity to Medical City Dallas hospital,” Kanoff said.
Dr. J. Robert Wyatt, a founding physician-investor of Forest Park Medical Center, said accessing capital was not a major concern.
“We started planning this project in 2007,” Wyatt said. “Then in early 2008, that’s when the real financial crisis hit.”
The location is accessible from all parts of Dallas, and it’s 400 feet from a DART station.
To date, Westmount has sold five pad sites, four billboards and 16 acres of land to Forest Park Medical Center.
Forest Park built a 66,000-square-foot specialty hospital and has a 125,000-square-foot specialty hospital and a 75,000-square-foot medical office building under construction.
Medical offices
The remaining land is being marketed to customers with medical development in mind.
An estimated $1.7 billion in medical services is spent annually within the 10-mile ring surrounding the site. That includes Baylor University Medical Center, Medical City Dallas and Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas.
That ring also includes the highest concentration of people age 65 and older in North Texas, said Rhodes Baker, an agent for Lincoln Harris CSG who was hired to sell the land.
“We’ve been pretty pleased with the response we’ve been getting so far,” he said.
Medical office development across the region is likely to remain strong. Investment property broker Marcus & Millichap Real Estate is forecasting an increase in demand for medical buildings in the next few years.
“The passage of health care legislation will translate into increased demand for medical office space, stimulating absorption in existing properties,” the report concludes. “Space demand was already forecast to grow to accommodate aging baby boomers.”
Health care employment has grown by more than 765,000 jobs since 2008 and is expected to add 4 million more positions over the next decade, Marcus & Millichap forecasts.
Staff writers Terry Box and Steve Brown contributed to this report.
