Anchor transforms former mall space into Bayhealth at Blue Hen outpatient facility
By John B. Mugford
The 80,000 square foot Bayhealth at Blue Hen outpatient facility in Dover, Del., is in a portion of a former mall that become a corporate center. Anchor Health Properties led the development process for locally based Bayhealth. (Photo courtesy of Anchor Health Properties)
In recent years, Bayhealth – already the Dover area’s largest health system with two hospitals and numerous outpatient facilities – had been increasing its capacity to meet rising healthcare demand from a growing population. However, it faced some challenges in the city’s downtown area.
The Dover-based system sought the best possible site and the most efficient development strategy for a new facility that could consolidate services from multiple locations, expand existing offerings and add new ones in a single, accessible downtown facility.
To address its needs, Bayhealth partnered with Anchor Health Properties, a longtime real estate partner based in Charlottesville, Va., to identify an optimal location, develop a new facility, and serve as owner representative and development manager throughout the process.
One of the first tasks undertaken by Anchor, which was led on the project by Matthew Pirolli, VP of development, was to work with Bayhealth executives to determine the best site.
The options included, as Mr. Pirolli tells HREI™, “multiple sites, including three existing building sites and a conceptualized greenfield site. We worked with the leadership, eventually determining that the best site was a portion of a former retail mall that opened in the 1960s and was converted to an office building, the Blue Hen Corporate Center, in the 1990s.”
According to Anchor, the team performed thorough due diligence and an extensive analysis of each site, factoring in the operational and financial impact on the health system to identify the optimal location and most effective development strategy for Bayhealth.
Mr. Pirolli notes that the Blue Hen site stood out for a several of reasons, including
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