A&G Realty Partners announced a new division focused on ramping up the productivity of U.S. healthcare providers’ diverse real estate holdings.
Just as retail landlords can ill afford to keep vacant or under-performing stores on their balance sheets, today’s medical providers are under the gun to maximize the real estate dimension of their hospitals, medical offices, skilled nursing homes and other assets, noted Peter J. Lynch, a Los Angeles-based Principal at A&G and leader of the company’s new Healthcare Property Division. Those efforts could involve everything from disposing of excess medical office space, to renegotiating an urgent care center’s lease, to selling a city hospital to a mixed-use developer, he said.
“Healthcare over the next five years will undergo an accelerating metamorphosis driven by the need for innovation, convenience and affordability,” said Lynch, who, in addition to his role at A&G, is a longtime member of the board of governors for a major not-for-profit healthcare system in the western United States. “The forces in play are every bit as disruptive as those afoot in retail or higher education. Real estate must be central to any strategic response.”
The principals at A&G Realty Partners have decades of experience in providing due diligence, valuations, strategic advice, auctions, lease terminations, occupancy cost reductions and other critical real estate services to those with interests in retail and nonretail sectors alike, said A&G Co-President Emilio Amendola. “In today’s marketplace, all of our clients understand that you can no longer afford to leave asset value on the table,” he said.
In the medical sector, significant ownership changes, as well as new methods for delivering healthcare to patients, are driving the need for transformative real estate strategies, Lynch noted. “Skyrocketing healthcare costs and plummeting reimbursements only add to the urgency as healthcare providers move from acute care, hospital-based systems to decentralized approaches based on community outreach and service,” he said.
Maximizing real estate allows healthcare companies to drive down costs and better position themselves for survival or growth, Lynch explained. But due to intense competitive pressures, not every attempt to roll out neighborhood surgery centers, urgent care services, skilled nursing facilities and the like will succeed. “We are already seeing distressed medical assets in need of disposition or lease renegotiation,” Lynch said.
Lynch, who joined A&G in 2012 with more than three decades experience as a senior executive in retailing and commercial real estate, has an extensive background in healthcare as well. In 2016, he was elected to chair the board of directors for the Valley Service Area of the Providence St. Joseph Health Foundation, a not-for-profit healthcare system with facilities across the western United States. Lynch continues to serve in that position. He joined the board of governors of the Providence Saint Joseph Foundation, which supports Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, Calif., in 2007 and chaired that body from 2011 to 2016. Since joining A&G, Lynch has been a client manager for such companies as Pier1, Pacific Sunwear, Orchard Supply (a Lowes company), Mann Theatres (a Warner Bros. company), and Career Education Corporation.
In addition to its Los Angeles office, Melville, N.Y.-based A&G also maintains offices in Chicago and Philadelphia. Best known for its work on behalf of healthy and distressed retail companies, A&G has increasingly applied its real estate methodologies outside the retail sector as well, including the higher education, office, warehousing/distribution, and housing markets. The firm was founded in 2012 by Amendola and Co-President Andy Graiser.
“Unlike major brokerage companies, we work for the client only and never are paid by landlords,” Graiser said. “It is this independence that allows us to pursue the most cost-effective solutions for our clients, whether it’s selling an asset, subleasing space, terminating a bad lease, or reducing occupancy costs.”