Trammell Crow Completes Los Angeles MOB

The Martin Luther King Community Health Building within the Martin Luther King Community Hospital in Willowbrook, Calif. Image courtesy of Trammell Crow Co.

Trammell Crow Co. has completed a 52,000-square-foot medical office building at the Martin Luther King Community Hospital in Willowbrook, an unincorporated community in Los Angeles County.

The MLK Community Health Building was developed in a public/private partnership with the hospital and the Los Angeles County Development Authority. Trammell Crow was chosen as the developer through a request for proposal process from the county in 2016. The hospital will begin receiving patients at the new facility this March.

Designed by HKS and built by ConAm Building Co., the two-story healthcare facility at 12021 S. Wilmington Ave. is the first stand-alone medical office building developed as part of the more than $1 billion medical campus transformation centered on the MLK Community Hospital.

READ ALSO: What’s Behind Stepped-Up Demand for MOBs

The new facility will provide primary care for the local community, as well as outpatient services including dialysis, wound care and imaging. It will also feature an ambulatory surgery center, a retail pharmacy, and a space for MLK Community Group provider care services. The 131-bed safety-net hospital is just south of Interstate 105 and bordered by Watts to the north and Compton to the south.

Local activity, national growth

Southern California has seen steady MOB activity lately, including the sale of a small building in Pomona in January, the sale of a two-building campus in Pasadena and a single property in Santa Ana in October and substantial renovations to another MOB in Torrance last August. Meridian was involved in three of the four properties.

As Commercial Property Executive reported in November, a second-half report from Marcus & Millichap projected that about 10.8 million square feet of MOB space would be delivered by year-end, an increase of about half a million square feet over 2018. Though the national average MOB vacancy had increased by 30 basis points year-over-year, pricing rose 3 percent, to about $255 per square foot, and rents increased modestly.