At its new Dayton location, Southwest Ohio ENT leases some space on the third floor and occupies the whole fourth floor of The Wright Health Building, which is situated on the south end of greater downtown.
The investment in renovations and equipment was more than $1 million, officials said.
“It’s a pretty big move. It moved us to 95 percent occupied for the building,” said Seth Edens, medical leasing specialist for property manager Faulkner Healthcare Realty. Faulkner is based in Louisville, Ky.
That compares to when Faulkner took over management and leasing of the building in 2011. Back then, the building was 60 percent full, Edens said. Southwest Ohio ENT fills space that was emptied in 2009 by Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Ohio.
Anthem said it moved in 2009 from office space in The Wright Health Building to space in Miamisburg.
In fact, the building would now be full except Orion Physical Therapy Specialists moved out of the building at the end of January when its lease expired. Orion moved to 105 Sugar Camp Circle, according to its website.
Southwest Ohio ENT moved across downtown from 369 W. 1st St., choosing The Wright Health Building in part due to its highway access and central location, said Dan Young, the practice’s chief executive officer. It began evaluating the move two years ago.
Southwest Ohio ENT was the only tenant in its former First Street location, and that building is now vacant.
The Southwest Ohio ENT practice first formed in 1968, Young said. Currently it has 150 full- and part-time employees including doctors.
The doctors group signed a 12-year lease for about 21,000-square-feet at its new medical offices. There, Dayton serves as a main central location for the practice housing a CT scan machine and the company’s voice institute. The practice has seven offices, north to Troy and south to Middletown.
Southwest Ohio ENT’s services include the CT machine, the voice institute, and allergy and audiology departments. It also sells hearing aids including Hillcrest, Young said.
The recognizable green four-story Wright Health building, a total more than 70,000-square-feet, was built in 1993 by a joint venture of Dr. Michael Ervin. Ervin built it to be a headquarters facility for his business Wright Health Associates, a company that grew to manage health care for about 250,000 commercial insurance customers in the area. Ervin said the company was sold to Anthem Blue Cross in the 1990s and he sold the building several years later.
Ervin is now known in the community for his volunteer roles as chair of the board of CareSource and co-chair of the Greater Downtown Dayton Plan.
“I think this is a sign of things to come,” Ervin said about activity at his former building, adding that downtown is seeing a lot of interest.
The Wright Health Building was bought in 2005 by Dallas, Texas-based The Cirrus Group LLC, a health care real estate development firm. In 2007, Healthcare Property Investors Inc. (HCP Inc.) of Long Beach, Calif., purchased it from Cirrus for approximately $10 million, according to Montgomery County property records.
Current building occupants also include Wright State Physicians, Miami Valley Surgery Associates, Sportopedics Medical Shoppe, Dentist Steve Sato and others.
One office space is left open to lease, with about 3,300-square-feet available, Edens said.
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