Industry Pulse: January 2013

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – On Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, a shopper can find a pair of jeans – diamond studded, of course – for a cool $4,000. There’s no doubt things can get expensive in the posh, star-inhabited suburb of Los Angeles. That includes rentable medical office building (MOB) space and the MOBs themselves, where many well-heeled patients go for elective surgeries. Well, MOBs could get even more expensive, as the Beverly Hills City Council recently passed a new ordinance that could restrict the building of new MOBs in the city and the conversion of general office or commercial space into medical. The ordinance requires more scrutiny of future MOB projects by requiring a conditional use permit and a review by the city’s planning commission before any new medical project can proceed. Beverly Hills has certainly become known as the home to the surgeons of the stars, with many doctors, including plastic surgeons, setting up shop in MOBs near Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and the ever-expanding Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, located just outside of the city’s border. In fact, city officials report that medical office space currently makes up 21 percent of all commercial space in the city – a figure that some officials and vocal residents consider high enough. As the issue of restricting medical office space was being debated in recent months,