GlobeSt.com UPDATE: Unico Lands Its First Medical Office Building

TACOMA, WA-Unico Properties has entered the medical office arena, paying $10.8 million for a 64,000-sf, multi-tenant mid-rise on MultiCare Health System’s Allenmore Hospital campus. The Allenmore Building B, as it’s known, sits on six acres, which should allow the Seattle-based real estate owner and operator to permit and develop an additional 40,000-sf building on the site that already has been preleased in part by MultiCare and is slated for completion in early 2007.Unico’s Dale Sperling tells GlobeSt.com the acquisition marks the start of a “major initiative” to diversify the company’s office portfolio by adding medical office buildings. Indeed, Unico’s vice president of investment Jonas Sylvester tells GlobeSt.com the acquisition is the first of several Unico expects to close in the coming months as it redistributes last year’s proceeds from lowering its stake in a stable of CBD office buildings from 100% to 25% while maintaining the management contracts( Click here for previous article ). Unico acquired Allenmore Building B from regional developer Steve Sarkowsky. The purchase price was $10.8 million. Sarkowsky also sold the 46,000-sf Allenmore A Building, but to MultiCare instead of Unico, in part because the building shares a wall with the MultiCare’s main hospital building. Both purchases were financed by Sun Life Assurance Co. of Canada, which already held the mortgages for the buildings. Sylvester tells GlobeSt.com that since Unico has aligned with MultiCare in Tacoma, it won’t be trying to create relationships with other health systems in the city. “Once you pick your health provider, you’re not going to work for the others [in that market]; that’s just the way it works” says Sylvester. “So the plan is that when MultiCare needs expansion space, going forward they will work with us.”Late last year Unico lost an opportunity to lock arms with Swedish Medical in Seattle when the health system instead chose Health Care Property Investors of Long Beach, CA to purchase some 480,000-sf of space in four buildings. As part of the deal, Swedish retained the dirt under all five properties and the first right to repurchase the structures. “We were pretty close [to landing the portfolio],” says Sperling. “It was disappointing.”Despite Unico’s newness to the medical office arena–which may or may not have played a part in Swedish’s decision–Sperling says his company is particularly well suited for the task. “Medical office buildings are generally in the orbit of a medical center that has a real interest in what happens, even though they may not be the owner, because the medical office buildings house their primary source of revenue, referring physicians,” says Sperling. And having spent the last 50 years in partnership with the University of Washington, successfully managing its mixed-use portfolio in Downtown Seattle, he says Unico is no stranger to making those types of relationships work well for both parties.