First look: Medical office building opens in Memorial Villages area, restaurant to come

Dallas-based Stream Realty Partners delivered its first medical office building in Houston Aug. 12, bringing a new 102,000-square-foot facility aimed at providing more convenient health care — along with a restaurant — to Hedwig Village.

Hedwig Place, as the building is known, is located at 8731 Katy Freeway, just west of where Voss Road crosses under Interstate 10. The building offers five floors of space specifically designed for medical care.

Floor plates in the building are typically 20,400 square feet, large enough for multiple examination rooms and patient waiting areas. Hedwig Place’s elevators are also large enough to accommodate a hospital gurney, which was an important design feature because two surgery centers are located at Hedwig Place. The building also has a pharmacy and areas for medical imaging and scans.

Just this week, Hedwig Place scored another amenity coup with the announcement that Federal Grill would be opening its second location in the building. The restaurant, which cooks up high-end American fare, will occupy 7,000 square feet on the building’s first floor. The original Federal Grill, which also goes by Federal American Grill, is located at 510 Shepherd Drive in the Heights. Federal Grill was represented by David Littwitz of Littwitz Investments Inc. on the deal.

Stream acquired the 2-acre property where Hedwig Place is located in June 2017 and construction began in February last year. The building was designed by E4H Architecture, which has offices primarily on the East Coast and in Dallas-Fort Worth. Canada-based WSP Global and Houston-based Jones Carter served as engineers. Houston-based Burton Construction was the general contractor for the project.

Richard Barbles, who leads the health care team at Stream in Houston, said the development of Hedwig Place was driven by the growing trend within the health care industry to provide patients with easier access to care.

“You’re seeing more and more convenient care centers moving away from free-standing emergency rooms or the major health systems and toward more convenient locations near retail centers,” Barbles said. “We wanted to take convenient care to another level by providing a free-standing, Class A facility.”

One key priority for the project, Barbles said, was to make getting in and out of the building as easy as possible. To achieve that, Hedwig Place has a six-level parking garage attached to the building, which allows patients to enter directly from the second floor.

From a medical provider perspective, Barbles said convenience equals efficiency, meaning they can see far more patients on a regular basis than at a traditional hospital, where just getting into a doctor’s office can be its own challenge.

It’s a sales pitch that appears to be resonating with Hedwig Place’s tenants. The building is already 70 percent leased, and Barbles said Stream is in negotiations with potential tenants that would bring the occupancy rate above 80 percent. Rents at Hedwig Place start at $36 per square foot per year, according to LoopNet.com.

Hedwig Place’s two anchor tenants are Memorial Plastic Surgery and a new Texas Ear, Nose & Throat Specialists location.

Memorial Plastic Surgery has leased 24,000 square feet in the building, which includes space for a clinic and a surgery center.

The 21,000 square feet leased by Texas ENT includes a number of patient rooms and five procedure rooms. Because Texas ENT is located on the second floor, its patients have a direct entrance to the parking garage.

“The Memorial Villages office is a brilliant step forward for our current and new patients as they will be able to receive the same individualized and exceptional care they have received for decades, but now in an elevated, beautiful and easily accessible location,” Dr. John W. Craddock Jr., a partner of Texas Ear, Nose & Throat Specialists, said in a statement.

Because of the early leasing success of Hedwig Place, Stream has already acquired land for a second medical office building, to be called Spring Valley Place, near the intersection of I-10 and Campbell Road. That project is expected to be completed by the end of 2020.