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Basin Street building for VA

AIRPORT SITE TO HOUSE MEDICAL FACILITY; FOURTH FOUNTAINGROVE BUILDING

SANTA ROSA – Basin Street Properties is building a new veterans’ clinic near the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport and has started construction on a fourth building in northeast Santa Rosa.

Meanwhile, the Petaluma-based real estate-development and management company aims to gain the upper hand in commercial leasing by offering smaller tenants room rates for Basin Street hotels, such as one nearing completion in Windsor, similar to what large companies can command via bulk annual room reservations.

At its Harvest Business Center development near the airport, Basin Street signed a 20-year build-to-suit lease last month with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for about 26,000 square feet of a 39,500-square-foot, two-story office building under construction at 3841 Brickway Blvd.

That will more than double the amount of space the Santa Rosa Veterans Affairs Community-Based Outpatient Clinic currently occupies in medical offices tucked behind Sutter Medical Center of Santa Rosa, according to the Santa Rosa clinic Administrative Officer Audrey Stephens.

The VA had been searching Santa Rosa since 2002 to find a place where it could offer a greater range of outpatient services and reduce the number of trips North Coast vets have to make to the VA medical center in San Francisco.

“We’re trying to bring services and care to outlying areas,” said Ms. Stephens.

Currently, the clinic’s staff of about 50 offers mental health, in-office and house-call primary care, and specialty treatment for hearing and skin problems.

The new facility is set to have a staff of about 70, including a second full-time audiologist and an auditory technician to help patients with hearing aids. The new clinic, set to open in late spring 2009, is set to have 14 examination rooms, two specialty treatment rooms plus offices that could be converted for use in treatment, if needed later.

The building for the new clinic also will have a radiology department for x-ray imaging of possible fractures and pneumonia as well as a laboratory for quick analysis of blood samples.

Since the clinic moved next door to the Sutter hospital in 1996, it has been using it mainly for blood testing, but also for x-ray imaging and emergency treatment. When it became clear the clinic could no longer grow in the medical office complex and that Sutter had decided to shut down the hospital – a decision reversed only this year – the VA planned to incorporate services it used at the hospital into the new clinic, according to Ms. Stephens.

For handling infrequent medical emergencies, the new clinic will call an ambulance to transport patients to the nearest emergency department – Kaiser Permanente’s, located five miles away from the new clinic site – just as the clinic does now to take patients across the parking lot to Sutter’s ER.

Another key reason for selecting the county airport site for the new clinic was easy-to-find access from Highway 101 for patients coming from the north and east. Though the clinic’s mandate since it started in a small office near Coddingtown Mall in 1995 was to serve some 20,000 veterans in Sonoma County, a proportionately large concentration, the clinic also serves patients from southern Lake County and northern Napa Valley who find it easier to come to Santa Rosa than to go to VA clinics in Ukiah and Vallejo, according to Ms. Stephens.

“We’re very fortunate to have what is essentially a build-to-suit government tenant,” said Basin Street Vice President Scott Stranzl. There will be roughly 10,000 square feet left to lease in 3841 Brickway. The asking monthly rent is $2.05 a square foot. Keegan & Coppin/Oncor International is marketing the space.

Basin Street completed the first building at the Harvest development – a 45,000-square-foot, two-story building – early last year. Tenants include SCS Engineers and Centellax. Space also remains in that building for lease.

The real estate company has approved plans to finish the Harvest project with a 45,000-square-foot third office building.

At press time workers were grading a site in northeast Santa Rosa for a 66,300-square-foot, three-story class A office building at 3562 Round Barn Circle. Basin Street is building what will be the fourth in a five-building development called Fountaingrove Executive Center.

Three already are built and were sold in 2005 and 2006 as part of a portfolio to Equity Office, now part of The Blackstone Group. Basin Street retained sites for two more buildings and plans to start on the last building, with 45,000 square feet, once the fourth is half-leased, according to Mr. Stranzl.

Other office development sites Basin Street retains include a site for a 34,000-square-foot last building near the county airport at Oak Valley Business Park and two more three-story buildings with 56,000 and 90,000 square feet, respectively, at Redwood Business Center at the southwest corner of Old Redwood Highway and North McDowell Boulevard in Petaluma.

Basin Street completed the first Redwood Business Center building – 56,000 square feet at 1383 N. McDowell – last year and has leased 25,000 square feet so far to Cyan Optics and Glass Mountain Capital. NAI BT Commercial is marketing the project.

To spur office leasing not only in Santa Rosa and Petaluma, which has an overall office vacancy rate of 27 percent and 34 percent for the best space, but also in Sacramento and Reno, where Basin Street also has office and retail properties, the company is leveraging its Basin Street Hospitality division, launched last July in partnership with Sonoma Mountain Group, according to Mr. Stranzl.

Basin Street tenants can get corporate room rates at hotels the division owns or is developing, such as the 108-room Hampton Inn & Suites nearing completion in Windsor, or with which it is affiliated, such as the 183-room Sheraton Sonoma County–Petaluma hotel. “If you’re a Basin Street tenant but not the size to reserve 300 to 700 room-nights a year to get corporate rates, we’ve established a special rate,” he said.

Other Basin Street Hospitality hotels included in the program are a 78-room Holiday Inn Express on Interstate 5 in Corning north of Sacramento, a 102-room Hampton Inn & Suites just under construction in Suisun City and a planned 148-room Hyatt Summerfield Suites in Reno, with redevelopment work starting there perhaps this year.

For more information, call 707-795-4477 or visit www.basin-street.com.

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