Altera Buys Big, Enters Phoenix Market

Rome Towers. Image courtesy of CBRE

In a flurry of recent deals, Dallas-based Altera Fund Advisors has acquired Rome Towers, a 130,000-square-foot medical office building in Gilbert, Ariz., in a four-asset, $75 million portfolio transaction.

Woodside Health sold the Class A Gilbert property together with two medical facilities in Middleburg Heights, Ohio, and one in San Antonio. The three additional assets in the portfolio total 150,000 square feet.

Public records show the buyer financed the purchase with a $180.5 million loan from Capital One. The financing also encumbers a second portfolio transaction which includes the Legacy Oaks buildings, two San Antonio assets totaling some 223,000 square feet, sold by Velocis.

The Rome Towers deal marks Altera’s entry into the Greater Phoenix medical office market. The firm’s portfolio adds up to some 1.2 million square feet across 14 properties in eight markets, according to CommercialEdge.

Marking a first

Completed in 2007 at 1760 E. Pecos Road, Rome Towers comprises a five-story building and an attached five-story parking garage. The property also features 24,000 square feet of retail. Tenants include SimonMed Imaging, Village Medical and New Direction Fertility Centers, among others.

The property is some 6 miles southeast of downtown Gilbert and 30 miles southeast of downtown Phoenix, just north of Santan Freeway. The location is 1 mile from the 212-bed Mercy Gilbert Medical Center.

CBRE’s Chris Bodnar, Lee Asher, Jordan Selbiger, Ryan Lindsley, Sabrina Solomiany and Zack Holderman represented Woodside Health in the disposition. Bodnar and Asher were also part of the brokerage team that assisted Ventas in the sale of a 285,463-square-foot medical office portfolio in September.

This year, across The Valley

Medical offices continue to attract investors’ interest, as this alternative asset type proved its resiliency over time and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. CommercialEdge shows five medical office properties, totaling nearly 380,000 square feet, have traded in Greater Phoenix since the beginning of the year.

Rome Towers was the largest asset to trade, but not the priciest. The property sold for $286.15 per square foot, a price surpassed by the Princess Medical Center sale. Wentworth Property Co. acquired the 69,611-square-foot asset in Scottsdale, Ariz., for $25.1 million or $360.58 per square foot.