Healthcare Growth Spurt to Expand Atlanta Medical Offerings

By Georgiana Mihaila, Associate Editor

Metro Atlanta’s healthcare real estate market is undergoing a real growth spurt as more medical services are relocated out of the crowded and expensive central hospital settings.

Piedmont Healthcare released plans to build a $23.4 million medical office building on its 105-acre Newnan Campus. The office building is slated for opening in 2012 and is expected to house internal medicine, cardiology, neurosurgery and general surgery specialists, who will be offered the opportunity of either leasing or investing in the property. Developed in partnership with Meadows & Ohly and a number of physicians that are future tenants, the 125,000-square-foot office building will be attached to Piedmont’s planned 136-bed replacement hospital, also under construction.

Well Star Health Systems Inc. also recently unveiled new plans for the $80 million health complex it has lined up for East Cobb. The Health Park will be located at the intersection of Providence and Roswell roads, where the 250,000-square-foot facility will sit on about 1.4 acres, with roughly 34 percent of the 23-acre tract consisting of green space. The stream that currently runs through the middle of the property will remain intact, yet the space will still accommodate at least 1,000 parking spaces.

The single-building facility will include medical office—with a focus on pediatrics, internal medicine and cardiology—and a 20,000-square-foot surgery center. Future plans include health-related retail and imaging and wellness services.

The Health Park outpatient campus constitutes a mere fraction of WellStar’s $800 million, decade-long investment blueprint that has so far incorporated a $100 million replacement hospital in Hiram and another outpatient campus in Acworth. Planned for opening in August 2013, the new campus is expected to employ 350 to 700 people.

The off-site outpatient campus’s goals are to decongest crowded hospitals, help patients feel more at ease and possibly bring care closer to many patients’ residences.