Premier Chicago hospital group pays $24.5M for Naples hotel property

A Chicago medical group that's part of Northwestern University’s medical school has bought a 3.5-acre parcel in Naples that once housed the Collins Hotel.

The group, Northwestern Memorial HealthCare, paid $24.5 million for the property.

Christopher King, chief media relations executive for Northwestern Medicine, says in an email that “we are exploring a future outpatient facility with a variety of clinical offerings" on the site. 

“We are doing so because it aligns with our long-term growth strategy, our patient first mission and our desire to bring world-class care closer to where our patients live,” he writes in the email to the Business Observer.

Northwestern Memorial HealthCare is a nonprofit, integrated academic health system providing world-class care through 11 hospitals, two medical groups, and more than 200 diagnostic and ambulatory locations to patients across Chicago, all 50 states and more than 100 countries.

King says the Naples purchase was made by Northwestern Memorial Health Care.

The Collins Hotel property is at 1100 Tamiami Trail N., near the Naples Zoo at Caribbean Gardens and about a mile from NCH Baker Downtown Hospital.  

It is not clear when the hotel closed. Its website is still active as is a tool to make reservations. But a call to the hotel Monday went unanswered for two minutes and no one responded to an email seeking comment. An attempt to make a reservation online was unsuccessful.

Northwestern is entering a market where NCH Healthcare System has had a solid foothold for decades. According to its website, the two hospital, 716-bed system sees 40,500 patients a year. It has been part of the Mayo Clinic Care Network since 2012.

As for Northwestern Medicine, its Northwestern Memorial Hospital was ranked No. 9 in the country on U.S. New & World Report’s Best Hospitals Honor Roll last year.