Pacific Group Breaks Ground on 135-Acre Las Vegas Medical Project

Helios Health and Wellness Campus illustrative plan. Image courtesy of Pacific Group

Salt Lake City-based Pacific Group has broken ground on the Helios Health and Wellness Campus, a 135-acre, mixed-use medical campus in North Las Vegas, Nev. The multi-billion dollar project is anticipated to create more than 10,000 jobs.

Helios will take shape in phases over the next seven to 10 years and will eventually encompass more than 2 million square feet of laboratory, research and medical office space and about 600 hospital beds. More than 500,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space is also envisioned, along with 250 to 290 rooms of lodging in two buildings.

Situated in a Job Creation Zone, the Helios site is at the southwest corner of Highway 215/Woodbury Beltway and North Pecos Road, directly across from the North Las Vegas VA Medical Center. Pacific Group acquired the parcel earlier this year for some $37 million, according to Las Vegas Review-Journal.

North Las Vegas currently has only one full-service hospital, Pacific Group stated, leaving its rapidly growing population—up 132.3 percent since 2000—severely underserved for acute healthcare services, with one hospital bed per 1,432 people, versus one bed per 232 people in Las Vegas.

Pacific Group has engaged Colliers to begin discussions with prospective development partners.

A modest medical office market

The first building to come online at Helios will be a medical office facility. According to a second-quarter report from Colliers, the North Las Vegas medical office inventory consisted of only about 293,000 square feet as of June, two-thirds of that being Class C space, with no Class A space at all.

Overall availability was 12.5 percent, up from 9.4 percent in the first quarter as the result of about 9,000 square feet of negative absorption. Southern Nevada, however, has seen six straight quarters of positive net absorption, also according to Colliers.

North Las Vegas might be underserved for health-care facilities, but its industrial space market is booming.

Last November, the parent company of luxury fashion brands Coach and Kate Space broke ground on a 788,000-square-foot fulfillment center in North Las Vegas. Clarion Partners and Seefried Industrial Properties were scheduled to complete the project this year.

This past April, VanTrust Real Estate started construction on its 350-acre Vantage North project, which should eventually total about 4.5 million square feet of industrial space.

And in August, Lincoln Property Co. affiliate LPC Desert West acquired an 86-acre site adjacent to North Las Vegas Airport to develop the eight-building, 1.6-million-square-foot Windsor Commerce Park.