NexCore Group was persistent in its quest to find a site, complete building
By John B. Mugford
NexCore Group orchestrated a land swap as part of complex development effort that made possible the recent opening of the 48,000 square foot Buck Creek Medical Plaza in Vail, Colo. Centura Health and Colorado Mountain Medical are the anchors. (Photo courtesy of NexCore Group)
The city of Avon, Colo., has about 7,000 residents and is in the heart of the Colorado Rockies, about 15 miles from Vail.
These days, town officials and the mayor are praising the efforts of a national healthcare development firm for persevering and building a much-needed multi-tenant medical office building (MOB) providing a variety of services, including emergency care, in a city where it seemed as if no appropriate land was available for such an endeavor.
Town officials, providers in the building and the development firm, Denver-based NexCore Group LLC, recently held a grand opening ceremony to unveil all of what the three-story, 48,000 square foot Buck Creek Medical Plaza has to offer.
The building is anchored by Englewood, Colo.-based Centura Health and Avon-based Colorado Mountain Medical, with other specialties being offered by local groups focusing on physical therapy, dental and allergy, and others.
At that grand opening, it was also revealed how NexCore used plenty of problem-solving, determination and persistence to get the project completed.
“I can’t tell you how proud we all are that NexCore was able to pull this off and we have this new medical office building in our town,” Avon Mayor Jennie Fancher said during the grand opening ceremony. “This building came together and was constructed in virtually a year. To me that’s remarkable.”
Much of the credit, according to local reports and officials, goes to Todd Varney, managing principal with NexCore. Mr. Varney spent six months trying to nail down a property that would work for the project, with a goal of building the MOB in Avon because of its central location within the Vail Valley.
After months of searching, Mr. Varney found a parcel that seemed perfect for the project: a 2.15-acre site called Buck Creek Lot 1A. But when Mr. Varney approached the owner, the Eagle River Fire Protection District, which had acquired the property in 2007 for $3.6 million, he learned that the district did not want to sell. It had plans for a new facility on the property.
So Mr. Varney approached the town, which had the rights to acquire the adjacent 2-acre lot, Buck Creek Lot 1B. When he learned that a Vail resident, Oscar Tang, owned the land, he began working out the details with him. Mr. Tang entered into a covenant and reverter clause with NexCore, which purchased Lot 1B for $1.6 million.
As NexCore began the design process on the medical facility, it worked with the Fire District on its building project for the adjacent parcel. Along the way, however, the two parties determined that the MOB would be best suited for Lot 1A and the Fire District’s project would work best on Lot 1B. So a swap was arranged in which agreed to buy the Fire District parcel for $3.6 million, the same price it had paid back in 2007, at the height of real estate market pricing.
NexCore broke ground on the project in early summer 2015, with the developer taking on the majority of the risk in order to get the building out of the ground and operational as soon as possible.
According to officials involved in the project, the new MOB has an accessible location in the Vail Valley not far from U.S. Interstate 70, offers stunning views of the Rockies, and provides free parking.
Avon’s town manager, Virginia Egger, noted that providing a variety of healthcare services is “one of the most important ingredients needed to have a strong community.”
Mr. Varney added, in a statement: “There are no truly comparable medical buildings in Avon or the surrounding communities that will be able to offer the image, referral base and patient convenience of Buck Creek Medical Plaza.”
He noted that other healthcare facilities in the area include “mixed-use (buildings), office buildings or retail projects with poor access, visibility and some are quite difficult to navigate. With the lack of adequate resources to identify quality physicians, patients often attribute quality of the location to the quality of practice. Buck Creek Medical Plaza will provide the image quality to give physicians a leg up against the competition.”
NexCore provided equity for the project and is the owner, property manager and asset manager of Buck Creek Medical Plaza, at 50 Buck Creek Road in Avon. Iselin, N.J.-based Siemens Financial Services Inc. provided debt for the project.
The designer was Denver-based Davis Partnership Architects. The construction manager was Englewood, Colo.-based Calcon Constructors.
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