Realty Trust Group (RTG) recently announced that work had begun on its new medical office development in suburban Atlanta. Representatives from RTG, Northside Hospital, and Physicians Realty Trust came together last month for the groundbreaking of a new, 100,000-square-foot medical office building in north Gwinnett.

RTG and Northside began site selection and project planning in 2019 and completed the purchase of the 21-acre Gwinnett site in April 2020. With construction now underway, the facility is expected to open next summer.

Northside Hospital will lease the majority of the new Atlanta medical office space. The provider plans to offer a wide range of specialized health care services to meet the diverse needs of the growing Gwinnett community, including primary care, medical oncology, imaging services, cardiology, orthopedics, physical therapy, and a surgery center with a focus on total joint replacement. The medical center will also include third-party physician office space.

Physicians Realty Trust — a prominent real estate investment trust with a focus on healthcare properties — is developing and financing the new building. RTG will provide project management services for the construction, as well as ongoing property management and leasing support upon the building’s completion.

“We knew we wanted to be in or around the Buford/Lawrenceville market and really understood that Highway 20 was a big growth corridor,” RTG Senior Vice President, Charlie Dickhaus, said. “We wanted to secure a property on Highway 20 that not only could satisfy the needs for the next five years, but could satisfy the needs for a lot longer than that. That’s why we ended up purchasing such a big piece of property that has potential for a second phase.”

While the site also provides an opportunity for a second building to be developed in the future, no formal plans have been announced.

Atlanta Claims 6^th-Largest Medical Office Building Market, but Growth Rate Lags

The medical office building decade report we published last year found that Atlanta ranked sixth among the 25 largest medical office space markets in the U.S. With roughly 24 million square feet of built medical office space, Atlanta finished ahead of Philadelphia, but behind Washington, D.C.

Even so, Atlanta was not among the top 10 in terms of growth rate. That’s because, during the previous 10 years, developers in Atlanta added nearly 2.9 million square feet of new medical office space to the market, which represented a growth rate of roughly 14%.

For comparison, the fastest-growing medical office market of the decade was the Twin Cities metropolitan area. Specifically, 3 million square feet of new medical space was added in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area — almost as much medical square footage as was added in Los Angeles during the same period. And, although the square footage total was very close to the Atlanta pipeline, it represented a growth rate of about 24% for the Twin Cities, which placed the Minnesota entry firmly at the top of the list.

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