Companies & People: Rendina and Artemis find a fit

Richard M. Rendina and Kevin Nishimura provide an inside look at their new JV

By John B. Mugford

Back in 2013, the executive leadership team at Rendina Healthcare Real Estate (HRE), a well-known, long-term and successful HRE development firm, went through the process of seeking a potential institutional equity partner for making acquisitions and developing medical office projects on a programmatic basis.

It didn’t work out.

“We just couldn’t find the right fit for our company,” Richard M. Rendina, chairman and CEO of the Jupiter, Fla.-based firm, tells HREI^™.

Recently, however, that changed, as Rendina went through a similar process beginning in late 2020, when it started strategizing a potential recapitalization (recap) a portion of its medical office portfolio to seed a joint venture (JV) with a new institutional investment partner. To help it with the process, Rendina hired the Healthcare Capital Markets team with New York-based Newmark Group Inc. (Nasdaq: NMRK), led by Ben Appel, Jay Miele, John Nero, Michael Greeley, Ron Ott and Adam Goss.

By early 2021, the firm had placed a portfolio of six medical office buildings (MOBs) on the market with the idea of finding a potential institutional investor to recap the properties — while still providing Rendina with an ownership piece — and to become the firm’s partner in a programmatic JV that will invest in both development and acquisition opportunities moving forward.

Interest from institutional investors to recapitalize the Rendina portfolio and to become the firm’s partner was strong, as “we ended up with 58 NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) and 11 bona fide offers to recap the portfolio and become our partner,” Mr. Rendina notes.

In the end, Rendina chose Chevy Chase, Md.-based Artemis Real Estate Partners, which was founded in 2009 and has invested about $9.5 billion in various sectors of real estate with about 100 operating partners.