Developers offer cure-all for hospital projects

     Hospitals nationwide are looking to outside sources for capital to build new facilities. Locally, St. Rose Dominican Hospital in Henderson is following that trend.
      The hospital chose Pacific Medical Buildings, a San Diego-based development company, to build the St. Rose Dominican Hospital Siena campus medical building. The hospital also commissioned the developer seven years ago to build the 44,000-square-foot St. Rose Dominican Medical Plaza.
      "In planning our new hospital campus, we knew there were a lot of options out there," Rod A. Davis, president and CEO of the medical facility, said recently. "We had a positive experience in 1992 ... and felt working with a development company was the way to go for our new medical office building."
      Pacific Medical Buildings is constructing the Del E. Webb Medical Plaza, a $15 million facility that will be attached to all four floors of the Siena campus hospital. The 93,000-square-foot office building will feature a 12,000-square-foot outpatient center as well as offices for about 70 physicians. The plaza is part of the $185 million Siena campus, which will house a hospital with a community medical center, ambulatory care center, physicians' offices, prevention programs and associated health care services.
      The Del E. Webb plaza is on the southwest corner of Lake Mead Drive and Eastern Avenue. It is scheduled to open in March 2000.
      Robert Rosenthal, president of Pacific Medical Buildings, said the services that companies such his offer are increasingly in demand.
      "The growing difficulty that many hospitals are experiencing in obtaining capital, along with the necessary focus on capital management, means that off-balance sheet financing for medical office buildings will become a more popular strategy in the future," he said. "These buildings can be constructed at lower costs, because they do not have to conform to the stringent building code requirements for hospitals. And, outpatient services can be provided at a lower cost in a medical office building than in the hospital itself."
      In 1986, Pacific Medical Buildings pioneered the hospital-based, developer-owned medical building, which conserves a hospital's capital and debt capacity, according to Rosenthal, who said the company leases the hospital's land, then develops, finances, leases and manages the facility.