30-acre Cypress Health and Wellness Campus to break ground this fall

See correction/clarification at end of article

A long-planned health care campus on the corner of U.S. Highway 290 and the Grand Parkway is finally close to breaking ground after a pandemic-caused delay.

Groundbreaking for the first building, a 70,000-square-foot multispecialty medical office building, is slated for this fall, said Kim Keller, a general surgeon and one of three physicians that head the development entity, North Cypress Land Ventures.

The other leading members are Kumaran Sathyamoorthy, a urologist, and Julius DeBroeck, a primary care doctor. Overall, the entity includes more than 30 physicians, Sathyamoorthy said. They purchased the tract from North Cypress Medical Center in summer 2019 and initially planned to start with a health and wellness center with a fitness area. But then the pandemic hit.

“It seems like with Covid, that’s what got hit the hardest,” Keller said. “So (we decided to) do a pause and just not do anything for two years, just because there was too much uncertainty.”

The plan is now to work on a 110,000-square-foot wellness center after the medical office building is completed. The third phase could include a women’s and/or a cancer center, depending on physician demand.

“The need in the community is there, and so it’s a matter of just coordinating the doctors with the need and the institutions,” Keller said.

The hope is to complete all phases, which could include four or five buildings, in about five years. Keller estimates the entire project will cost between $500 million and $600 million.

The first building is fully financed with the help of the physician offices that will occupy it, Keller said, adding that it is already 90% leased.

For Keller, the medical office building will be the fourth he has been involved in developing, he said.

“They’ve all worked out well, because typically, after you build it, it’s anywhere from two to six times the value that you started off with,” he said. “So it’s easy to refinance and get (the investors) their money back, and they still have the building.”

Another physician-owned entity, which included Keller and DeBroeck, developed what is now HCA Houston Healthcare North Cypress at 21214 Northwest Freeway in 2006. On that campus, North Cypress Land Ventures most recently completed Physician Office Building III in December 2021.

Denver-based health care real estate developer NexCore, which was also involved in the POB III development, was to have a stake in the Cypress Health and Wellness Campus, but the physician group eventually decided to go it alone, Keller said.

“I’ve found as I’ve done more and more projects, I’ve become more of a micromanager. I don’t like to give away a lot of money, and I also don’t like to be told what to do,” he said. “We’re still very good friends with the people at NexCore. For sure, the first building wasn’t going to be getting off the ground without allowing the physicians to be more invested in the building, both from a control standpoint as well as from a monetary standpoint.”