Tampa General buys land for rehab hospital

BUYER: Florida Health Sciences Center Inc. dba Tampa General Hospital (principals: Margarita Cancio, Ronald Hytoff, Phillip Dingle, James Warren III, Jospeh Taggart and Davis Starz), Tampa

SELLER: Island Center Corp. Inc.

PROPERTY: 1307 W. Kennedy Blvd. and 109 N. Willow Ave., Tampa

PRICE: $12.25 million

PREVIOUS PRICE: $128,500, November 1992 and $42,000, November 1986

LAW FIRM ON DEED: Hill Ward Henderson, Tampa

PLANS, DESCRIPTION: Tampa General Hospital purchased 9.6 acres bordered by West Kennedy Boulevard and North Willow Avenue for $12.25 million.

The price equated to $1,276,041 per acre.

The hospital plans to use the former auto-dealership site, now vacant, to develop a rehabilitation hospital, a medical office building and a lodge for families of long-term patients.

Tampa General Hospital officials plan to take their time touring other rehab hospitals, investigating trends and developing their plans for the hospital, according to Oslec Fernandez, the hospital's director of facilities management.

The hospital will start by building the rehabilitation hospital and a parking garage on adjacent property. The rehab hospital will feature up to 265,000 square feet, in no more than six stories.

Tampa General hopes to have up to 150 beds in the rehab hospital. It also committed to developing it as a LEED certified building.

“[The hospital] is growing and we're landlocked,” Fernandez says. “We have water on three sides and the fourth side is a residential neighborhood. So our only way to grow is to buy property offsite. We hope to be ready to move in there in five years.”

Tampa General hired Skanska USA to do its preliminary estimating for the project. Tampa-based HKS Architects Inc. is the architectural firm for the programming and planning.