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Firehouse Square
West Allis, Wisconsin
This 17,000 square foot medical office building is located in West Allis, Wisconsin, in a neighborhood targeted for redevelopment by this municipality. The site on which the clinic is located was formerly a police department precinct and then a used car auto dealership. The site required environmental remediation prior to development, was unusually small and abutted two residences, an alley and a public parking lot.
The occupant, West Allis Memorial Hospital, Inc., a subsidiary of Aurora Health Care, was interested in this location for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the hospital served residents in the area, and their physicians were situated in three separate locations, all of them undersized and outdated. This new location enabled the three physician practices to merge into one location, providing economics of scale, updated facilities, and an onsite lab, imagining unit, and pharmacy that were previously unfeasible in the three, separate, smaller locations. Limited land availability in this mature Milwaukee suburb made the site location process particularly vexing and time-consuming.
Finally, this project presented Aurora Health Care with the opportunity to limit capital expenditures by entering into a sale-leaseback transaction with Irgens Development Partners, LLC. Irgens Development structured a transaction in which the tenant signed a long-term lease with the cost of all tenant improvements included in the cost of the lease. The tenant's capital outlay was limited to the cost of the furniture, fixtures, and equipment purchased to outfit the new clinic.
The project was a success from all perspectives: the patients enjoy the convenience and ease associated with the new building and its ancillary services, the clinic staff is thrilled to be in an efficient new facility, the hospital's financial officers are please to have reduced their capital outlay, the City and nearby residents are satisfied that a blighted site has returned to the tax rolls, and last, the project's equity investors are pleased that the project's financial returns have surpassed initial expectations due to quality project management. |
