Medical building to sell for $10M

An acquisitive Arizona-based real estate investment trust has struck a deal to buy one of Mount Pleasant's biggest medical office buildings for $10 million.

Healthcare Trust of America Inc. said last week that it has entered into an agreement to purchase the Medical Center at East Cooper, a 60,800-square-foot office complex near Bowman and Von Kolnitz roads and East Cooper Regional Medical Center.

The deal works out to about $164 a foot. The three-story building is 90 percent leased to 16 tenants.

The sale is subject to unspecified contingencies.

Mark Engstrom, executive vice president of acquisitions for Scottsdale-based Healthcare Trust, said in a statement that the "location within a fast-growing Charleston submarket" was one of the key reasons it is investing an eight-figure sum in the region when most commercial real estate buyers are still on the sidelines.

County records list the seller as American Medical International Inc.

The sale announcement comes weeks before the April 1 opening of the nearby East Cooper Medical Center, a 130-bed hospital that cost $143 million. That will replace the existing East Cooper Regional Medical Center, which is too small for the Tenet-owned health care provider's future needs.

Setting roots

Not far from the rumble of the machinery at Boeing Co. 's North Charleston construction site, the designer of the aerospace giant's new jet assembly building has opened its own office. BRPH Inc. , a Florida-based firm, is settling into Trident Research Center, a cluster of office buildings off International Boulevard.

Priority No. 1 for the office's two associates is overseeing the construction of the 610,000-square-foot main assembly building, which has a footprint of about 12 regulation-size football fields.

But Brad Harmsen, the company's president and chief executive officer, hinted that the firm plans to pursue other aviation companies that follow Boeing into the region.

"Our goal is to expand these roots and continue to grow in the Charleston region," he said in a statement.

Reach Katy Stech at 937-5549 or kstech@postandcourier.com.