Medical Mart backers see furniture first — but something greater down the line

When you try to picture what Cleveland’s Medical Mart will look like — at least at first — think of a Medical Furniture Mart.

It’s likely many initial tenants in the permanent showrooms of the proposed medical showplace will feature beds, chairs and floor tiles meant for hospitals, private practices and home health care settings. The bulk of the companies touted as possible initial tenants are similar to Brandrud, a Herman Miller company that makes chairs and cabinets for hospitals, or Arc | Com, which makes fabrics and other textiles for the health-care industry.

Supporters of the medical mart concept say furniture is a foundation that can attract and serve many sectors of the health-care market and draw conventioneers. Furniture makers would not only sell their products at the mart, they would lend their products to create mock waiting areas, operating rooms, nurses’ stations or other spaces where medical companies could demonstrate their products during certain conventions.

The trick would be to showcase furniture and equipment that interests enough medical professionals to give the project a boost in its initial phase and attract medical conventions.

“The idea is to create an efficient way to outfit a health-care facility, and come in and look at products in certain categories and a range of offerings,” said Mark Falanga, senior vice president for Merchandise Mart Properties Inc. (MMPI) in Chicago would operate the facility.

Government officials still must finalize agreements and sell property to MMPI to complete the deal for both a convention center and medical mart. But even as the project inches toward reality, it’s hard to envision just what the medical mart would offer in its permanent showrooms. Cutting-edge heart valves or prosthetics? Would electronic medical records firms take up residence?

Part of the confusion is MMPI’s doing. In public presentations in February in Cleveland, MMPI displayed a list companies it would consider for its permanent showroom. But then, applying a secretive approach that has earned it the ire of the public, MMPI refused to make the slide show publicly available afterward.

Falanga said the company has spent the last year talking to businesses about the concept, but has been short on specifics with the public about the medical mart’s contents because it’s awaiting final approvals from city and county governments.

Yet the first-phase focus becomes clearer by reviewing a portion of the companies listed during MMPI presentations, and by interviewing MMPI officials, supporters and consultants who have talked with the company. Potential tenants include Hyland Software, a Cleveland-area electronic database company that has a large health-care business. Also included were Samarion and Omnicare, which provide geriatric products and services.

“It won’t all be furniture,” Falanga said.

But, generally, most of the potential tenants make furniture. They include IOA Healthcare Furniture, which sells sleeper beds, patient room furnishings and accessories like oxygen-tank holders that attach to chairs.

Others listed by MMPI include KI Furniture, which makes health-care seating products, and Nurture by Steelcase, which designs furniture for hospital waiting rooms, laboratory accessories and computer kiosks.

No one has committed to joining the Medical Mart. MMPI has said it will subsidize up to the first 25 companies that commit to space, but it doesn’t expect any commitments until the project is finalized.

“If we decide to pursue an opportunity like this, we’ll certainly release a formal announcement, and only then could we discuss it,” Herman Miller spokeswoman Susan Koole wrote in an e-mail.

Some of the potential tenants in the medical mart say they would like more than a subsidy as incentive to join. They want to help shape the mart concept. “We can share our strengths and say what we like and what we don’t like,” said Fabio Delmestri, IOA’s vice president of design and marketing.

Delmestri, whose company regularly exhibits at the NeoCon World’s Trade Fair at MMPI’s Merchandise Mart in Chicago, said businesses like his are often sideshows at health-care conventions where doctors and other health-care decision-makers attend clinical seminars. In turn, many furniture and design conferences aren’t focused enough on the health-care market.

If the medical mart can address these problems and attract enough conventions and visitors, then IOA would be interested.

“The medical mart sounds intriguing, but it all depends on the details,” Delmestri said. “A permanent showcase is only as good as the people you draw into it.”

Bill Priemer, chief operating officer at Hyland Software, said his company is interested in taking permanent showroom space or opening a satellite office in the medical mart.

Thirty percent of Hyland’s revenue comes from the health-care industry, and the Westlake company often constructs mock hospital settings at conventions to simulate a paperless health system. Priemer likes the medical mart concept of permanent showrooms of furniture and other supplies, which Hyland could use to create a similar simulation.

Priemer said Hyland also would consider periodically returning its customer conferences, which include as many as 1,500 attendees, back to Cleveland. The company used downtown Cleveland hotels for years until the conferences got too large. Hyland moved the events to Nevada, Florida and Arizona.

But a medical mart won’t trump trips to other medical conventions for Mike Gordon, who operates Gordon & Associates in Florida, which specializes in designing ambulatory surgery centers and private specialty clinics. His firm attends medical conventions just to keep abreast of changes, and leaves decision-making on furniture and other equipment to its clients.

“Having a place in Cleveland that shows all this stuff would have to have participation by the vendors to show the newest pieces for all specialties, or in my opinion, would not be worth our time,” Gordon wrote in an e-mail. “I still would want our people to attend the conventions and talk to surgeons about using the equipment.”

Falanga said that’s the end goal for the medical mart. The hope of this untested approach is to attract a wide array of medical equipment manufacturers, which then draw in the conventions and continue to change the medical mart into the commercial destination that the Cleveland area and its health-care industry want.

First, though, comes furniture.

“It’s a bit of a crab walk,” Falanga said. “A showroom will attract trade shows, and trade shows will attract [companies into the showroom]. Somewhere, we have to jump in and start all this. I’d say that’s the immediate challenge in front of us all.”