BELFAST, Maine — Penobscot Group Well being Care has finalized a $7 million deal to purchase the former Bank of America complex off Route 3 in Belfast.
The transaction is main, with the property incorporating a 142-acre campus and 7 buildings with 316,000 sq. ft of workplace house. The acquisition implies that Seaport Group Well being Care Heart in Belfast, which is a part of PCHC, will be capable of develop. Greater than that, although, the nonprofit group is trying to make use of its new location to extend entry to well being care and fill wellness gaps locally, though it’s on the early phases of determining what that can appear like.
“It’s an extremely thrilling alternative, for us and the entire group,” Lori Dwyer, the president and chief government officer of Penobscot Group Well being Care, the most important federally certified well being heart in Maine, stated Tuesday. “We actually see ourselves as a part of the group financial improvement plan.”
The sale is anticipated to breathe new life into a fancy that when served as an financial engine for the area however has grown a lot quieter since its heyday within the early 2000s.
“We have now numerous ideas,” Dwyer stated. “We’re exploring and researching the sort of aligned providers that shall be a very good match for that campus. None of that is definitive. I can’t emphasize sufficient how a lot enter we’ll be in search of from the group.”
The group, which introduced in July that it was beneath contract to buy the campus, had a digital actual property closing on Friday. It purchased the property from present proprietor STAG IV Belfast LLC, a part of actual property funding firm Stag Capital of Boston. Previous to that, it was owned by Financial institution of America, which acquired it after shopping for MBNA in 2005.
Proper now, PCHC’s agency plans for the campus revolve round Constructing 5, a 72,000- sq. foot construction which shall be renovated to be the brand new dwelling for Seaport Group Well being Heart. The well being heart, which has 8,000 sufferers, now operates in a leased, 11,800- sq. foot constructing at 53 Schoodic Drive in Belfast, across the nook from the brand new property. It provides main care, psychological well being providers, restoration providers, a pharmacy and extra, and is “bursting on the seams,” based on officers, who stated it must greater than double its dimension to fulfill present and future wants.
There’s greater than sufficient house within the new constructing, the place the observe will occupy the primary ground, with the second ground reserved for PCHC administrative and different makes use of. The group has secured a federal grant to assist with the renovations of the constructing, Dwyer stated. Future providers provided there’ll embody dental care and expanded psychological well being and restoration packages.
The most important construction, Constructing 8, will proceed to be occupied by Financial institution of America.
As for the event of the remainder of the vacant workplace house and huge campus, time will inform, she stated. Concepts to date embody a toddler care heart and senior providers.
“I believe the broader imaginative and prescient is targeted on group wellness,” Dwyer stated, including that the group plans to work cooperatively with different well being care suppliers reminiscent of Waldo County Normal Hospital. “We wish to work with them and work with different individuals to determine what’s lacking. We wish to fill within the gaps.”
No matter occurs, the campus is more likely to look fairly totally different than it did 20 years in the past. On the peak of MBNA’s Belfast operations within the late Nineties and early 2000s, the corporate employed about 3,000 individuals there as debt collectors, name heart employees and extra, a quantity that equaled practically half of the inhabitants of the midcoast metropolis.
However issues modified when Financial institution of America moved in. That firm’s a lot smaller workforce now not wanted the acres of climate-controlled cubicles, and bought a part of the campus to Massachusetts-based athenahealth. The remainder of the holdings finally have been bought to STAG IV.
With among the buildings empty or underused, the altering actual property actuality led to a years-long dispute between STAG IV and town of Belfast concerning the tax valuation for the property. In 2015, town valued the property at $41 million, however after town and the funding firm got here to an settlement in 2018, the assessed worth has dropped to a few quarter of that sum.
STAG IV has remained one of many metropolis’s largest property taxpayers, nonetheless, paying $261,039 to Belfast final 12 months.
In 2019, the corporate tried to sell the property at auction, with bids beginning at simply $1.8 million, however its reserve wasn’t met so it wasn’t bought.
Dwyer stated that as a result of her group has a for-profit tenant on the property, the overall rule that nonprofit organizations are exempt from paying property taxes doesn’t apply to the property as an entire.
She and others on the well being care group are trying ahead to shifting ahead with renovations and plans.
“We’re simply excited,” she stated. “It’s a pleasant brilliant spot within the midst of this very gloomy pandemic.”
