Nashville medical mart adds clinical services firm SpecialtyCare as tenant

Nashville’s medical mart has secured a commitment from Nashville-based clinical services provider SpecialtyCare to lease 8,500 square feet.

SpecialtyCare, which has signed a lease for the space, marks the fifth tenant signed by the Nashville Medical Trade Center, with those leases set to cover about 70,000 square feet, a spokesman said.

The property developers behind Nashville’s project are competing with developers in Cleveland to open the nation’s first collection of medical products showrooms, commonly referred to as a medical mart.

SpecialtyCare works with hospital clients and bills itself as the largest provider of outsourced clinical services in the nation. It provides services to 545 hospitals in 40 states. Those services include transfusion, minimally invasive surgical support, sterile processing department management, and anesthesia support.

The company will use its space in the Nashville medical mart to meet with clients, as well as establish its education and training center there, including a simulated operating room, according to a statement. SpecialtyCare employs 900 clinicians and seeks to keep them current on procedures, equipment and industry issues.

Bill Elliott, executive vice president of business development for SpecialtyCare, said the Nashville-based company didn’t have “any direct dialogue” with representatives of Cleveland’s medical mart. He said he liked the “methodical, disciplined approach” the developers behind the Nashville project have taken, and feels encouraged by the commitments Nashville has secured from “significant players.” And it doesn’t hurt that his company is already headquartered in the city.

“Under the assumption that this is successful, we think this will be a big draw for the healthcare industry,” he said.

In contrast to Nashville, the developers behind Cleveland’s medical mart have signed more than 60 prospective tenants to letters of intent (LOIs). The Nashville project’s backers delight in pointing out that those LOIs aren’t legally binding and impose no penalties on companies that back out of them, as two prospective tenants have already indicated they’re likely to do.

Nonetheless, Cleveland looks far likelier to hit its projected opening date — Aug. 31, 2013 — than Nashville. Officials behind both medical mart projects have said the healthcare market is likely sizable enough to only support one of them.

Nashville also projects an opening date in 2013, but that may be a long shot. Cleveland has already started construction and Nashville appears nowhere close to leasing the amount of space required to begin construction of its privately financed project.

Executives with Dallas-based Market Center Management Company, the property developer behind the Nashville medical mart, have said that they need to lease 60 percent of the project’s 1 million square feet of showroom space before they can get the financing to begin construction. By signing a lease with SpecialtyCare, Nashville has drawn a little closer to that goal, but still has a long way to go.