DOC Founder John W. Sweet is the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award winner
By John B. Mugford
John W. Sweet and his wife, Beth, were on hand to receive his 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award, which was presented at the Revista Medical Real Estate Investment Forum (MREIF) in Bonita Spring, Fla., March 1. (HREI photo)
As many professionals approach their 60s, they’re most likely thinking about how they will spend their retirement years.
Not John W. Sweet, who likes to call himself a “late bloomer.”
In fact, Mr. Sweet’s career was just ramping up as he was approaching his 60s, which also coincided with his entering the healthcare real estate (HRE) sector, with an emphasis on medical office buildings (MOB), in 2002.
“I had a good career for a long time,” Mr. Sweet says, noting that he was with several firms before getting involved in the HRE space, including working for Milwaukee-based B.C. Ziegler & Company, a specialty investment bank, in the late 1990s.
Mr. Sweet is perhaps best known in HRE for starting one of the sector’s most successful, prolific buyers and owners of MOBs: Milwaukee-based Physicians Realty Trust (NYSE: DOC). In less than a decade since its initial public offering (IPO) in mid-2013, REIT has become one of the best-known and most highly regarded firms in the business.
It was serial entrepreneur Fred Klipsch – well-known for his firm, Klipsch Group Inc., a maker of high-end speakers and other audio equipment – who brought Mr. Sweet to the product type. Mr. Klipsch recruited him in 2002 to help launch and co-found an MOB-focused real estate investment trust (REIT), Windrose Medical Properties, which was based in Nashville, Tenn.
After helping with that launch,Mr. Sweet, who was commuting from his home in Milwaukee to Nashville and traveling the country to find MOB purchase opportunities, was recruited back to Ziegler in 2004-05 to start a specialty fund focused on investing in the product type. It was during that time that Mr. Sweet met Mark D. Theine, now the executive VP of asset management with DOC, and brought him in to help launch and operate Ziegler Healthcare Real Estate Funds,
They built the Ziegler portfolio up for nearly a decade before deciding to launch DOC in 2013. The new REIT’s original portfolio was the one Mr. Sweet had accumulated while at Ziegler.
“Getting into healthcare real estate was when my career really took off,” Mr. Sweet tells HREI™. “It just so happened that I didn’t get into this sector until I was right around 60 years old. But doing so reinvigorated me and I felt like I was getting started once again. A lot of people who are approaching 60 might be thinking their career will soon be over, but I like to say that it can be the start of something new and really good. For me, it’s been a great challenge but a lot of fun being involved in healthcare real estate.”
Because of what he has contributed to the industry by founding one of the most successful, highly regarded owners of MOBs, Mr. Sweet, who retired from DOC in 2017 and has been serving on a number of boards of trustees since then, is the 2022 recipient of the HREI Lifetime Achievement Award.
HREI presented the award to Mr. Sweet during an awards ceremony on March 1, during the 2023 Revista Medical Real Estate Investment Forum (MREIF) conference in Bonita Springs, Fla.
The utmost praise from his colleagues
The DOC executives who nominated Mr. Sweet for the award – including President and CEO John T. Thomas, who Mr. Sweet recruited to run the REIT when it was launched, as well as Mr. Theine, to whom Mr. Sweet was a mentor – call him a “consummate professional.”
In nominating him for the award, the DOC team wrote that Mr. Sweet has “an outstanding reputation as (being) fair, personable, and highly knowledgeable … sought after by buyers and sellers alike. With every transaction, John leverages the strengths of his team.”
They add that he is “well-known by hospital executives, brokers, developers and sellers for his witty sense of humor, integrity and creativity in structuring investment transactions.”
In an email to HREI, Mr. Thomas noted: “I’m so happy that John Sweet’s career and contributions to the medical office industry, and to healthcare in general, as well as his mentorship to so many outstanding professionals, are being recognized with his being named as the HREI Lifetime Achievement Award recipient.
“Fortunately for me, John was looking for a partner to attempt an initial public offering, seeded with the Ziegler Fund’s medical facilities,” he said, adding jokingly, “I think he worked his way down through his massive Rolodex with multiple rejections until he got to the Ts and caught me in a moment of weakness.
“I thought he was either hitting the sauce early or had bumped his head in asking me to help run the new REIT. But out of tremendous respect for John, he convinced me to meet with him and the investment bank he had convinced to manage the IPO process.”
Mr. Thomas continues: “Almost 10 years and $6 billion in growth later, boy was John Sweet right! The ragtag handful of us that John led through the IPO process now totals more than 105 families, directly employed by DOC. We all owe John, especially me, a tremendous amount of gratitude, respect and admiration.”
He finished up by noting, “It’s truly an honor just to know John, and I am blessed to have the further opportunity to work directly with him and to get to know his whole wonderful family.”
Mr. Theine noted that a letter Mr. Sweet sent to the board of trustees of DOC a year after its IPO sums up his character as well as his thoughts on how the business should be run.
That letter stated: “If you treat your team, your tenants and your investors as partners, success will follow.”
Mr. Theine continued: “John also believes in what can be called the five Cs of success for DOC: communication, caring, creativity, consistency and comedy.
“In the letter John wrote, he noted, ‘While we certainly made our share of mistakes and we enjoyed the good fortune of coming public in a very favorable overall stock market, there were a number of key things we did that brought us to where we are today. Before they are forgotten, it is important to write them down and refer back to them from time to time. Please don’t be underwhelmed by the simplicity and common sense nature of the attributes listed. Describing them is easy, but consistent execution of them takes work.’”
Those values, according to Mr. Theine, “defined John Sweet’s career, work ethic and the genuine man that he has always been. Consistent with his 2014 letter, John has treated me like a true partner every step of the way, beginning when we met and created the Ziegler Healthcare Real Estate Funds and through the DOC IPO in 2013. That has continued through today, as he remains a mentor offering advice as the DOC team and MOB portfolio continue to grow.”
As an example of how the DOC team still considered Mr. Sweet to be a part of the company and its future, a number of DOC professionals held a surprise dinner in a private room at a Milwaukee restaurant for Mr. Sweet after it was learned that he would receive the HREI Lifetime Achievement Award. The team made up a mock cover of HREI magazine with a headline that read, “How Sweet it is.”
Mr. Sweet’s sweet reaction
Upon receiving the award during the HREI Insights Awards ceremony in Bonita Springs, Mr. Sweet told the audience: “I am really honored by this, even though I can’t help but think there are others who are more deserving.”
When he and his colleagues launched DOC, Mr. Sweet said, he had a vision of a REIT that would act with integrity and would never re-trade on any deal. It would be a REIT that would build strong relationships and partnerships with local brokers, health systems and other firms in the industry, such as HRE developers with whom it would provide financing for certain projects.
“And we made sure that we would treat the tenants in our buildings in the same way we treat our own employees and our shareholders,” Mr. Sweet said. “Doing all of those things, acting with integrity, is a good way to be able to sleep at night – and I can say that I have been sleeping well at night for many years.”
Not only has he slept well, but he built a heck of a REIT.
During Mr. Sweet’s tenure as the chief investment officer from 2013 to 2017, DOC grew its portfolio from the original $125 million in assets to nearly $3 billion by the time he retired in 2017 – with all of that growth taking place in only 42 months.
Since then, DOC has continued to grow, with its portfolio now valued at nearly $6 billion. It owns 291 properties with more than 16 million square feet of leasable space.
Not bad for a late bloomer.
Previous HRE Lifetime Achievement Award winners
The winners of the HREI Lifetime Achievement Award have been some of the leading pioneers in the HRE space. They include:
■ 2013: Robert Rosenthal, Pacific Medical Buildings
■ 2014: Bruce A. Rendina, Rendina Companies
■ 2015: James O. Meadows, Meadows & Ohly
■ 2016: Tim Oliver, NexCore Group LLC
■ 2017: Paula R. Crowley and Louis S. Sachs, Anchor Health Properties
■ 2018: Michael A. Noto, Rendina Companies and Welltower Inc.
■ 2019: David R. Emory, Realty Trust Group
■ 2020: Rance Sanders and Bart Starr Sr., The Sanders Trust
■ 2021: Bond Oman and Tom Gibson, Oman-Gibson Associates
■ 2022: John W. Sweet, Physicians Realty Trust ❏
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