The tight medical office market around Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian is set to get some breathing room late next year.
Pacific Medical Plaza, a four-story, 75,000-square-foot medical office building, is set to break ground early next year in Costa Mesa, just down Newport Boulevard from Hoag in Newport Beach.
Irvine-based Brown Associates is developing the $18 million project on the site of a former trailer park.
Doctors and others already in the area could be tenants at Pacific Medical Plaza, according to John Wadsworth, a broker with Colliers Seeley International Inc. in Irvine.
“It will allow tenants who are already in the area to combine their space,” he said.
Wadsworth and Joe Winklemann, both of Colliers Seeley’s Irvine office, are marketing Pacific Medical Plaza.
The vacancy rate for medical space around Hoag is less than 1%, according to Wadsworth.
“There are a finite number of medical office buildings,” he said. “Basically, there’s no space available. Whatever comes available gets leased quickly.”
Medical buildings in Newport Center around Fashion Island have waiting lists a couple of years long, according to the brokers.
“In popular hospital locations, many doctors tend to keep their practice in the same building for decades, giving little opportunity for outside physicians to find space unless new development happens,” Winkelmann said.
Pacific Medical Plaza’s developer gets the benefit of being near Hoag without having to go through the hoops of building in Newport Beach, where the project would have been put to a vote.
In 2000, Newport Beach voters passed Measure S, known as the Greenlight initiative, which requires a public vote on developments of more than 40,000 square feet and requiring a general plan change.
Hoag is spending some $100 million to add 300,000 square feet of space to its campus as a way of handling increased demands for women’s health services. The seven-story Hoag Women’s Pavilion is set to start taking patients late next year.
Pacific Medical Plaza is planned for four acres of land with a three-level parking structure next to the building.
Hellmuth Obata Kassabaum PC is the Costa Mesa building’s architect. Los Alamitos-based Millie and Severson is the building’s general contractor.
Pacific Medical Plaza is the latest example of recent medical office building in the county, most of which has been in South County.
Masterplanned communities such as Rancho Santa Margarita, Ladera Ranch and San Clemente’s Talega have spurred demand for medical facilities of all kinds, including hospitals and doctors offices.
In Laguna Niguel, an 85,000-square-foot, five-story medical center is set to go up on a site on Crown Valley Parkway near Cabot Road that previously housed a motorcycle dealership.
The project is set to include a 20,000-square-foot surgical center along with offices for various types of doctors, along with a parking structure for about autos.
That building is near Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center, which is planning to spend about $108 million to build a five-story, 75-bed critical care building as a way to keep up with heavy South County population growth.
Other projects include a 12-building, 150,000-square-foot office complex in San Juan Capistrano with about a third slated for medical office and surgery space.
