Posted Monday, September 11, 2006

Raw Land Solutions Client: Crossroads Med Center Just Keeps Growing
Update on the project at Crossroads Plaza from Northern Colorado Business Report.

09/01/2006

Source: Northern Colorado Business Report

Author: Tom Hacker

LOVELAND - The Denver-based developer of a medical office project at Crossroads Plaza, having outgrown a plan for 20,000 square feet of space hatched just a few months ago, is now set to build a center that might be four times that size.

Medical Properties Group LLC President David Bregman said his Crossroads Medical Wellness Center will be a one-of-a-kind entry into the booming health-care market.

"Our structure is to create each building on the foundation of a clinical nexus," Bregman said. "We start with the primary-care doctors, and we build on top of that with specialists in the same project. For patients, it's a one-stop health-care shopping experience. Everything, from primary care to specialty referrals, is in one place."

Bregman and his project-planning consultant, a former Denver real estate lawyer, learned early in the process that demand for medical office space in an integrated project like theirs would quickly outstrip their first visions for the land on the south side of Crossroads Boulevard, about a half mile east of Interstate 25.

The center's scope doubled from 20,000 square feet to 40,000, then redoubled to about 80,000.

Why the boom in demand? It's partly because of the way the project is packaged.

A leasing plan is designed to lead doctors into equity holdings in the building, with a profit share guaranteed when the building is sold. In addition, Bregman's group assumes the cost of architectural designs for individual practices in the center and a marketing and promotion budget of $10 per square foot of space.

Under the marketing program, for example, a medical practice with 2,000 square feet of office space in the new building would receive $20,000 worth of advertising, with Bregman's group, the tenant and an advertising agency collaborating.

A centerpiece of the proposed project is a health and fitness club that would serve the needs of patients and tenants alike.

Non-traditional approaches

Bregman said the setting would be the perfect venue for a colonoscopy party.

And he's not joking.

A Bregman client, Boulder-based gastroenterologist Dr. Joel Montbriand, threw a colonoscopy party for women patients at his practices in Boulder, Lafayette and Longmont, complete with limousine transportation, massage treatments and pedicures.

Montbriand said Bregman's new-style health-care office developments make them suited to such non-traditional treatment approaches.

"The idea takes a little bit of getting used to," said Montbriand, who practices with Gastroenterology of the Rockies locations in Boulder, Lafayette and Longmont. "It was something we heard about being done in Texas, and now we're planning on duplicating it in Longmont and Lafayette."

While the notion may sound odd, it's founded on sound medical reasoning, Montbriand said.

"Women are very health-conscious about getting mammograms and pap smears, but they're under this misconception that they are at lower risk for colon cancer than men, something that's just not true," he said. "There's a bit of a hurdle for anyone considering a colonoscopy, and this is a way around that."

Montbriand and his colleagues identified patients who would benefit, then invited them for the Saturday morning event at the group's Boulder office.

"We rented limousines, hired massage therapists, offered pedicures," he said. "We wanted to make it a special event. We did 12 cases that morning. About a third of the patients did have polyps that might have caused problems later, and we removed them."

Montbriand said Bregman applies a keen sense of the medical profession to designs for office complexes that serve patients better because they free doctors "to keep their passion," as he put it, in their surroundings.

"I think he's a very energetic guy, with a vision to change health care," Montbriand said. "His role is to try to create the physical campus that will make it work, and to assemble a community of like-minded physicians who will complement one another."

Bregman said the success of the Crossroads project, as measured by the demand driving its scope and scale to higher levels, is pegged to a leasing policy oriented toward building a medical community rather than just filling offices.

"When we talk about a clinical nexus, there are two components for that," he said. "The first is the clinical infrastructure, the facilities themselves. The second is staying true to the discipline by only leasing to doctors that will fulfill that. What it offers the patients is an overwhelming sense that they can have all their medical needs taken care of in one spot, and by people who know them."