A Catholic hospital chain that bought a 270,000-square-foot office building in Douglas County last week wanted the land beneath it.
CommonSpirit Health said Friday morning that it will demolish the former TTEC headquarters building at 9197 S. Peoria St. and incorporate the land it sits on into a 42-acre medical campus.
The Chicago-based health care company paid $45.5 million for the building just south of E-470, east of Interstate 25. That came with approximately 24 acres.
At the same time, CommonSpirit also bought adjacent land from California-based Shea Properties, which is undeveloped. Records show the company paid $16.6 million for approximately 18 acres.
In total, CommonSpirit spent just over $62 million, or about $1.5 million an acre on average.
Demolition of the former headquarters of TTEC, a call center operator, will begin later this winter, according to CommonSpirit.
Mountain Region President Andrew Gaasch told BusinessDen that CommonSpirit zeroed in on the southern part of the Denver metropolitan area for a new facility in large part because of its “growing yet also aging community.”
He cited a state report that estimated that 65 percent of Douglas County’s population will be 65 or older by 2030, as well as reports estimating that both Douglas and Arapahoe counties will add hundreds of thousands of residents in the coming decades. The Peoria Street site is near the border of the two counties.
Gaasch said the company began looking for land more than a year ago, generally targeting 40 acres, give or take five.
Gaasch declined to discuss specifics of what might be built on the site, although he said it would include opportunities for recreation and rejuvenation in addition to medical treatment.
“It’ll certainly be a multiyear approach,” he said of the buildout. “For us it’s investing in the future while also looking at the current health needs of the community.”
Construction on the campus is expected to begin in the third quarter of 2025.
CommonSpirit was formed by the 2019 merger of Colorado-based Catholic Health Initiatives and California-based Dignity Health. Its local hospitals include St. Anthony in Lakewood, St. Anthony North in Westminster and Longmont United.
The company’s deal to purchase Shea Properties’ land includes a provision that gives Shea the right to repurchase the property if CommonSpirit does not complete construction of at least 200,000 square feet of building space on it within eight years, records show.
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