Meridian Sells Pasadena MOB Campus

Cotton Medical Center. Image courtesy of Meridian

Meridian has sold Cotton Medical Center in Pasadena, Calif., to Healthcare Realty Trust. The asset consists of two office buildings that total 115,000 square feet.

The property is located at 50 Bellefontaine St. and 50 Alessandro Place. In January 2016, Meridian purchased the medical center when it was 29 percent vacant with plans to upgrade the property.

According to Heidy Duffy, Meridian’s asset manager, the company spent $10 million in interior and exterior renovations including new wayfinding signage, modernizing the common areas and the elevators, adding a new cafe, installing fire sprinklers in one of the buildings, building automated parking equipment, installing electric car charging stations, making Title 24 and ADA upgrades, and installing high efficiency BMS, HVAC and lighting systems. The major renovations undertaken during Meridian’s ownership brought the medical center’s vacancy rate to 14 percent.

One of those tenants came recently, in June, when WelbeHealth signed a 14,200-square-foot lease at Cotton Medical Center and became the largest tenant of the property. Other tenants include Quest Diagnostics, Fairmont Pharmacy and Pasadena Family Medicine in the North Tower and LabCorp, Alliance Digestive and Pasadena Women’s Medical Group in the South Tower.

CBRE’s Angie Weber, Dana Nialis and Kyle Weber of the Los Angeles office managed the leasing efforts of the property while both the buyer and seller were self-represented in the off-market transaction.

Meridian’s mission forward

According to R.J. Sommerdyke, Meridian’s vice president of acquisitions, Cotton Medical Center was the company’s largest acquisition at the time. Based on the strong location of Southern California and being located next to public transportation and major highways, Sommerdyke said Meridian saw this as an opportunity to enter a strong market.

Looking forward, Meridian is planning on continuing their projects throughout California, the Pacific Northwest and the Southwest. Sommerdyke added that the company has a development pipeline with projects in escrow and other completed properties for sale. Meridian also has 500,000 square feet of properties under development or redevelopment and at least another 500,000 square feet in their development pipeline.

Elsewhere in Southern California, Meridian is working on The Laguna, a 57,000-square-foot medical building in Laguna Hills and is renovating a 26,000-square-foot medical office building in Torrance.