Welltower Inc. (NYSE: WELL) has entered into a definitive purchase agreement under which Welltower will acquire a 43-acre, 6-building, 270,000 square foot medical office campus in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey for $140 million. The campus will be master leased by Summit Medical Group, one of the nation’s premier independent multispecialty medical practices, under a new 20-year, absolute net lease.
This campus is the largest and most comprehensive of five “hubs” in Summit’s 80-location hub-and-spoke model, and will bring Welltower’s total Summit-leased footprint to over 500,000 square feet. The sale is expected to close in the third quarter of 2019, subject to customary closing conditions. The sale of the medical office campus to Welltower will help facilitate and will be conditioned upon Summit’s recently announced intended merger with CityMD, a leading urgent care platform with significant scale in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area.
“The merger of Summit Medical and CityMD is the latest example of how Welltower is facilitating and financing new models in health care delivery,” said Thomas J. DeRosa, Welltower chairman and CEO. “This landmark transaction will create a physician-centric, consumer-oriented integrated delivery system that will improve access, quality and lower cost of care in one of the nation’s most populated regions.”
“With this transaction, SMG is pleased to expand its relationship with Welltower to another one of our key medical practice locations,” said Jeffrey Le Benger, M.D., chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Summit Medical Group