Outpatient Projects: Suburban Chicago project fills need

Bluestone plans November opening for $18 million MOB near Advocate hospital

By John B. Mugford

 

For quite some time, Chicago-based Bluestone Healthcare Partners LLC searched for a site on which to build a new medical office building (MOB) along a high-demand healthcare corridor in Oak Lawn, Ill.

The corridor, near the 694-bed Advocate Christ Medical Center on 95th Street in Oak Lawn, is in a commercial area with virtually no developable land available.

“It was very difficult for us to locate a sizeable parcel on West 95th Street and in close proximity to the hospital,” says Mike MacKinnon, director of development for Bluestone.

“This market has a well-insured population with over 500,000 people within five miles of any point along the corridor.”

He added that having three hospitals within a short distance – Little Company of Mary, Palos Community Hospital and Advocate Christ Medical Center – “make this medical corridor highly competitive.”

So when one of the company’s brokers, Mike Siedlecki of Oak Brook, Ill.-based Polivka Group, learned that State Farm was soliciting bids to dispose of a former claims building adjacent to Advocate Christ Medical Center, Bluestone jumped at the chance to acquire the building and 2.53-acre site at 4220 W. 95th St.

Bluestone, which is financing and will own the future MOB, has razed the State Farm building and in recent weeks began construction on the future two-story Oak Lawn Medical Office Building, an $18 million, 37,658 square foot outpatient and clinic space.

It chose Anderson Mikos Architects ltd. to design the facility and Bulley & Andrews as the general contractor; both firms are based in Chicago.

As Bluestone officials gear up for an opening later this year, possibly in November, the building is 80 percent pre-leased to Advocate Health and Hospitals Corp. and Orland Park, Ill.-based-based Midwest Orthopaedic Consultants.
Brad Wilson, principal and co-founder of Bluestone Healthcare Partners, calls the site of the future building the “gateway of the 95th Street medical corridor,” adding that it will be seen by more than 43,000 vehicles per day.

Because of that, Mr. MacKinnon notes that Bluestone is “in talks with three physician practices that will individually or collectively lease the remaining 7,000 square feet in the building,” meaning it will more than likely be filled when it opens.

For Bluestone, the project comes at a time when it also has projects either under way or in the pipeline in Willowbrook, Ill., and Pewaukee, Wis., where Mr. MacKinnon says it has received “significant interest from two Milwaukee-based medical systems” for space in a future 40,000 square foot MOB.

The company also has additional sites in the Chicago suburbs are currently under contract.