The former Rendina HRE president reflects on his move to the provider side
By John B. Mugford
Stephen K. “Steve” Barry
In the healthcare real estate (HRE) sector, there have been several high-profile health system real estate executives who have joined private HRE firms, bringing with them the deep-rooted knowledge and understanding of how healthcare organizations operate and what services they might need from private firms to manage and grow their real estate portfolios.
However, in 2022, one of the HRE sector’s most prominent executives reversed this trend, when Stephen K. “Steve” Barry, who was then president of one of the sector’s oldest and most well-known firms, Jupiter, Fla.-based Rendina Healthcare Real Estate, joined a major not-for-profit health system in the Northeast.
Mr. Barry went to work for West Orange, N.J.-based RWJBarnabas Health, which has 44,000 employees and is New Jersey’s largest academic health system with 12 acute care hospitals and more than 850 ambulatory locations.
Upon announcing the hiring, the system stated that it had created a new position that Mr. Barry would fill: executive VP of facilities management and real estate development.
In a news release announcing the move, John W. Doll, the chief operating officer of RWJBarnabas, said that as the health system “continues to grow and establish its ever-increasing role as an anchor institution in New Jersey, Steve (Barry) is a seasoned leader who will help us optimize our physical space to support our dedicated staff in better serving the needs of our patients and community members. His background and expertise are uniquely suited to fulfill the needs of this new position, which will evolve over time as our system continues to expand access to care.”
It appears that Mr. Barry has performed as advertised, as he was selected last year by a panel of New Jersey commercial real estate professionals and the business journal NJBIZ as one of the state’s Leaders in Real Estate, Construction and Design.
Mr. Barry certainly had a strong, diverse background in HRE prior to joining the health system, as he had been with Rendina for 18 years. Prior to that, he’d spent two years as an analyst with JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) in New York.
When he first started with Rendina, he began his career in HRE by focusing on leasing properties in the Northeast. Then, the firm’s founder and namesake, Bruce R. Rendina, moved him to the property management side of the business to work with another well-known HRE professional, Michael A. “Mike” Noto.
From there, he started developing properties and was promoted to president in 2018.
Mr. Barry was no stranger to RWJBarnabas before going to work there, as he grew up in New Jersey and later, while with Rendina, established a strong relationship with the system’s executives in developing more than 15 projects for them.
Now that Mr. Barry has been firmly established as a health system executive for the past three years or so, we thought it would be interesting to catch up with him to find out how he’s settled into his new role and what it’s been like to make the transition to working for a not-for-profit health system.
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