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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
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BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME

CHAD LEFTERIS
CEO
UCI Health
Irvine

Runs OC’s only academic medical center and all clinical and patient-serving operations. Also heads the overall UCI Health system, which includes Orange’s UCI Medical Center, the area’s largest hospital, and more than a dozen outpatient research and specialty care centers throughout Orange County and portions of Riverside County. Overseeing one of larger healthcare construction projects in the area.

THEN: UCI Medical Center retained its No. 1 position among OC’s largest hospitals this year, with a 14% growth to $1.4 billion in net patient revenue. “Last year, we delayed care and we said don’t come to hospitals,” Lefteris told the Business Journal. “This year, we’re seeing a lot of catch-up between the surges. We are busier than ever. There’s this pent-up demand.”

NOW: Construction underway for $1.3 billion medical complex on land the school owns at the corner of Jamboree Road and Birch Street. Dubbed the UCI Medical Center-Irvine, project to include a 144-bed acute care hospital with an emergency room, an outpatient Center for Advanced Care for primary and specialty health services, a Center for Children’s Health and the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and Ambulatory Care building.
FUTURE: All facilities, spanning about 800,000 square feet combined, are expected to receive patients in 2025.

IN THEIR WORDS: The new center in Irvine “will be a full-service academic medical complex, bringing a broad range of the most advanced healthcare services to coastal and southern Orange County, including access to the hundreds of clinical trials underway at UCI Health.”

DONALD BREN
Chairman, Irvine Co.

JONATHAN BRINSDEN
President
Irvine Co. Office Properties

Steve Case
EVP, Strategic Leasing & Advisory,
Irvine Co. Office Properties
Newport Beach

OC and California’s largest office landlord, with 53 million-square-foot operating portfolio counting over 560 buildings. Also the state’s largest speculative office developer, with several projects underway in the Irvine Spectrum area.

THEN: Irvine Co.-owned buildings were home to six of the top seven local office leases of 2021, and those six deals totaled over 600,000 square feet of space. Irvine Co. says that it leased nearly 10 million square feet of office space to about 1,000 companies in 2021, across its entire portfolio.

NOW: Third phase of Spectrum Terrace well underway. Apple reported to taking one of the three buildings now under construction at the project. Amazon recently confirmed its own full-building lease, with plans to hire 800 tech and office positions for the location.

FUTURE: Going forward, Case said he’s expecting to see further local leasing activity growth in a number of industries, like medtech, gaming, next-gen aerospace, and electric vehicles. Also keep an eye on Orange County’s life sciences industry, Case said. It’s a sector expected to soon see large local growth push, he said.

IN THEIR WORDS: Last year’s leasing performance “is a window into the post-pandemic future of work,” Brinsden said. “The activity clearly shows the importance of being together to drive company culture, productivity, innovation and, ultimately, the bottom line.”

Keith Strier
VP, Woldwide AI Initiatives
Nvidia Corp.
San Clemente

Local exec for Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA), one of the world’s foremost manufacturers of video graphics with a $450 billion market cap as of mid-May. Part of collection of influential area business executives trying to increase the base of tech talent in Orange County.

THEN: Recently helped organize the installation of a supercomputer capable of doing 8 quadrillion calculations a second at Chapman University in Orange. Nvidia is donating the computer to help students from lower-income areas gain access to the latest computing technology, and to expand the region’s pipeline of artificial intelligence tech workers. “This is the first community operated supercomputer” in the country, Strier told the Business Journal. The computer may be among the fastest in Orange County, he said. “We’re excited to be a part of it.”

NOW: Besides Chapman and Nvidia, other contributors to the $1 million project include Irvine-based IT and managed services provider Trace3, Israeli-based Run:ai and the CEO Leadership Alliance Orange County (CLAOC). The supercomputer will be under the jurisdiction of Chapman’s Fowler School of Engineering, whose dean is Andrew Lyon.

FUTURE: The program plans to work with high schools and universities around Orange County, including University of California, Irvine and California State University, Fullerton. Access will be limited to those granted it. “We want Orange County to become an AI super hub,” said Jasmine Pachnanda, senior vice president of artificial intelligence at CLAOC, whose collection of over 50 top area execs are aiming to build OC into what it calls a “premier, inclusive, innovation talent hub.”

IN THEIR WORDS: Strier envisions students from junior high schools to high schools to junior colleges to state universities gaining access to the supercomputer’s power. “If you’re in seventh grade or a sophomore in junior college, having exposure to this technology, seeing examples of how this technology will be applied—these things will be game-changing,” he said.

ANNETTE WALKER
President
City of Hope Orange County
Irvine

Leader behind City of Hope’s comprehensive cancer campus and regional network moving ahead at FivePoint Gateway campus in Irvine; $1 billion project among OC’s most ambitious developments in recent years. Previously served as president of strategy for Providence St. Joseph Health, where she was instrumental in bringing together two noted health organizations to form the nation’s third-largest health system.

THEN: Nearly 20% of OC residents with cancer leave the county for advanced treatment, and nearly 4,000 travel outside the area to other City of Hope locations, including its campus in Duarte.

NOW: The City of Hope Lennar Foundation Cancer Center, running 190,000-square-foot, set to open for first patient in August, at office building that it purchased and is converting to medical uses.

FUTURE: A separate, stand-alone specialty cancer hospital, running about 164,000-square-foot, is slated to open in 2025. The 73-bed facility would employ about 350 staff and physicians. All told, campus expects to employ about 650.

ROBERT BRAITHWAITE
CEO, President
Hoag Memorial Hospital
Presbyterian

Oversees Hoag’s entire healthcare network, including two hospitals and the Hoag Orthopedic Institute, which in total count some 600 beds. Planning one of the area’s larger healthcare development projects at Irvine hospital.

THEN: Hoag had been affiliated with larger Providence Health nonprofit health system for nearly a decade.

NOW: Ended affiliation at end of January. Terms of separation weren’t disclosed. “We appreciate the relationships we built over the last several years with the Providence and St. Joseph teams,” Braithwaite said at the time.

FUTURE: Moving ahead on plans for major expansion to Irvine hospital campus, which opened in 2010. Multi-phase project could add several new facilities on the campus, including a Women’s Hospital as well as a Digestive Health Hospital, and increase the number of hospital beds there to 391. Received $50 million gift from Sun Family Foundation, announced in March, going toward project.

IN THEIR WORDS: “Hoag is elevating healthcare and wellness in Orange County by transforming our delivery of care to an integrated, specialized services-based model,” Braithwaite said in March. “We are engaging with our board and the community to shape our Orange County expansion and look forward to announcing details in the coming months.”

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