ATLANTA-An affiliate of RiverOak Investment Corp. LLC has acquired the Loganville Medical Center, a 15,000-square-foot, single tenant medical office building in Loganville, GA, a small town about 35 miles east of Atlanta for $5.3 million. The property, built in 2007, sits on 3.2 acres and has 5,000 square feet of physicians’ offices, over 3,000 square feet of urgent care space and nearly 5,700-square-feet devoted to imaging services and physical therapy, in addition to an 1,500-square-foot lobby. It functions as a satellite office for the Walton Regional Medical Center in Monroe, Georgia, 12 miles east of Loganville.

This is the second healthcare building acquisition for RiverOak, which is based in Stamford, CT,  in as many months. Working with a well-capitalized Middle Eastern investment group, RiverOak recently acquired a four-building portfolio of medical office buildings in North Carolina and is currently evaluating similar purchases in other locations throughout the US.

The Middle Easter investment group, which purchased the Loganville Medical Center in partnership with RiverOak, plans to use $150 million worth of equity as leverage to buy as much as $350 million worth in medical office buildings in the US, says George Yerrall, managing director at the RiverOak Investment Corp.

The property in Loganville is 100% leased for 14 years with two five-year options to Monroe HMA, Inc., which is doing business as the Walton Regional Medical Center, a Georgia corporation which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Health Management Associates, based in Naples, FL. What RiverOak’s affiliate is buying, says Yerrall, is the 14 years remaining on the lease with HMA, which is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange.  HMA had taken over the Walton Medical Center in Monroe, GA prior to its development of the medical center in Loganville.

“Our business model is to stay outside of metropolitan areas, so as to purchase medical facilities more efficiently than we can in urban centers," says Yerrall. Likewise, HMA has a similar philosophy about delivering healthcare outside of urban areas, he says. "While Miami, as an example, has a lot more real estate "sex appeal" than Loganville, Georgia, our business model is more interested in cash than a location’s sex appeal," says Yerrall.

The investment group affiliated with RiverOak found the Loganville property on the Internet, on the Stan Johnson Co.’s website, says Yerrall. The real estate broker, based in Tulsa, OK, represented the seller, which was based outside of Dallas,” he says. This kind of deal could not have happened before it became common to do business over the Internet, says Yerrall.