Special Report: ULI healthcare group flies under radar

URBAN LAND INSTITUTE HAS BEEN QUIETLY DEVELOPING A HEALTHCARE COUNCIL

By Murray W. Wolf

Most of the growing number of professional associations and media companies that sponsor healthcare real estate conferences seem to think bigger is better. More registrations, more sponsors, more publicity – it’s all good.

But the Healthcare and Life Sciences Council of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) takes a quite different approach. Rather than maximizing the size of its council events, ULI limits membership, eschews sponsorships and ordinarily bars the media from attending its meetings.

ULI isn’t just playing hard to get. Part of the organization’s core mission is to provide a relatively small, private forum where recognized industry leaders can gather to confidentially discuss their business challenges, share best practices and exchange information.

If you haven’t heard about ULI’s involvement in healthcare real estate, this discreet approach is probably the reason. But it could also be because ULI’s Healthcare and Life Sciences Council is still relatively new.

Founded in 1936, ULI is a non-profit research and educational organization supported by its members. It currently boasts nearly 30,000 members worldwide with 67 local chapters in North America and Europe.

As a sponsor of hundreds of local, regional and national events each year, ULI’s lineup is highlighted by its two big annual meetings: the Spring Council Forum and the Fall Meeting & Urban Land Expo.

According to the ULI website, the organization “facilitates an open exchange of ideas, information and experience among local, national and international industry leaders and policy makers dedicated to creating better places.”

Much of that information exchange happens at meetings of ULI’s more than 20 councils, and that’s where the confidentiality comes in. The councils are much smaller groups – usually limited to about 50 members – which focus on specific topics, such as certain product types (including commercial and retail, corporate real estate, hotels, industrial and office park development, multi-family and others) or industry issues (affordable/workplace housing, community development, inner-city issues, sustainable development and more).

Until recently, ULI did not have a healthcare real estate council. So, about three years ago, several active ULI members approached the organization about creating one. Some of the proponents included Jeffrey H. “Jeff” Cooper of Savills LLC; Tim Pattison and Kathryn West of Partners HealthCare System Inc.; and James Schmid, who was then with HCP Inc. (NYSE: HCP) and is now with Servant Healthcare Investments.

Mr. Cooper says he and his cohorts started by convincing ULI officials to include them on the agenda at the annual Fall Meeting in September 2009. They organized a panel discussion titled “The Evolution of Healthcare Real Estate.”

Mr. Cooper was the moderator and the  panelists included several well-known healthcare real estate executives, including James F. Flaherty of HCP Inc. (NYSE: HCP); Todd Lillibridge of Lillibridge Healthcare Services, now part of Ventas Inc. (NYSE: VTR); Ross J. Raneri of Leo A Daly; and Kathryn E. “Kathy” West of Partners HealthCare System Inc.

At that time, no one was quite sure if there would be much interest in a discussion of the healthcare niche at a mainstream ULI event, Mr. Cooper says. The healthcare real estate panel was also one of nine concurrent sessions, which meant it was competing for attention with eight other panels.

The healthcare proponents realized that if their panel was poorly attended, it could have spelled the end of their efforts to create a council.

Fortunately for Mr. Cooper and his colleagues, the response was strong.

“We had standing room only,” he recalls, with almost 300 people in the audience.

That led to a council organizational meeting at the ULI Spring Council Forum in Boston in April 2010, followed by the official creation of the Healthcare and Life Sciences Council in time for its first official meeting at the ULI Fall Meeting in Washington, D.C., in October 2010. An additional day-long Healthcare and Life Sciences Council meeting was held at the Spring Council Forum in Phoenix in May 2011.

(After quite a bit of cajoling, a reporter from Healthcare Real Estate Insights^™ was allowed to attend the Phoenix meeting, but only under the condition that all of the discussions were “off the record” and could not be reported. The exception was a presentation by Jeff Land, VP of corporate real estate for Catholic Healthcare West. Mr. Land gave us permission to report on his talk, which is summarized in the article “Healthcare following familiar pattern” on Page 13.)

Currently, Mr. Cooper is the chairman of the ULI Healthcare and Life Sciences Council, Ms. West is assistant chairman, Mr. Pattison is the membership vice chair and Eric W. Fischer of Trammell Crow Co. is program vice chair.

The council concentrates on medical office buildings (MOBs), ambulatory surgery facilities, medical centers, acute care and specialty hospitals, and life science and research campuses. Discussion topics can include anything of common interest to healthcare or life sciences firms and real estate professionals, such as development, financing and investment.

Of course, this all begs the question of why another healthcare real estate group and conference is needed at a time when such events seem to be proliferating.

For example, the most recent BOMA Medical Office Buildings and Healthcare Facilities Conference, which was held from May 4-6 in Dallas, attracted more than 500 attendees, In addition, a number of media companies also sponsor healthcare real estate conferences throughout the year.

The ULI Healthcare and Life Sciences Council is different, Mr. Cooper insists.

“BOMA is very large” and a public event, he explains. “The ULI council system creates a place where peers can interact with each other and with their problems … where people can let their hair down.”

At ULI council meetings, discussions concerning problems and possible solutions are much more detailed, he adds. “It’s much more specific than BOMA.”

Also, as noted previously, most ULI councils are limited to about 50 members. Membership in the Healthcare and Life Sciences Council stood at 41 members this past spring, Mr. Cooper says, but several more members were subsequently added.

So the council has just about reached its limit, he says. At that point, prospective new members are placed on a waiting list. A full ULI membership for a private sector or for-profit executive is $1,175 per year.

Finally, some might wonder why the council also includes life sciences – which is related to, but still quite different from, the healthcare real estate market.

Mr. Cooper explains that there were three groups interested in forming a council: healthcare, “eds and meds” (education and medical real estate), and life sciences. ULI officials suggested that the three related groups coordinate their efforts to form a single council.

In fact, that first panel discussion back in 2009 also included Gig Codiga, associate director, real estate, Genentech Inc., a large biotechnology firm, and the current vice chair at large is Peter Calkins, executive VP with the life sciences group at Forest City Enterprises Inc. (NYSE: FCE). Consequently, at the Phoenix event the council’s morning sessions focused on healthcare real estate while the afternoon sessions concentrated on the life sciences.

The next ULI Healthcare and Life Sciences Council meeting is scheduled to take place in conjunction with the ULI 2011 Fall Meeting in Los Angeles, Oct. 25-28.