Blighted Medical Office Building Receives "Green" Facelift

Local developer chooses to salvage and reuse, instead of demolish and rebuild.

Millcreek, UT -- July 22, 2013 -- Construction is underway on a familiar office building in the St. Mark’s Hospital district. Sixty-five thousand square feet of rentable office space in the Doxey-Hatch Medical Center located at 1255 East 3900 South in Salt Lake will be demolished. The remaining sixty-eight thousand square feet will be completely renovated, injecting new life into the area landscape.

Rendering of the Blighted Medical Office (Doxie Hatch)

Rockworth Companies, LLC, a Sandy based real estate firm, purchased the building in late 2012 at a time when it was approximately 88 percent vacant.

“Minus the concrete structure, the whole building was obsolete in every way shape and form,” said Chas Johnson, project manager for Rockworth. “We either had to scrape the entire building and start from scratch, or salvage what we could and redesign it. We felt the latter was the most responsible option for the environment and for future tenants.”

Rockworth hired the Richardson Design Partnership and Rimrock Construction to update both operating efficiencies and aesthetic appeal.

“The building offered a great design problem,” said Jeff Byers, principal at the Richardson Design Partnership. “How do you take a utilitarian building with distinct materials and minimal windows, and open it up to have a modern, light-filled space without compromising the building structure? We were able to create a more inviting and open building by using the existing structural frame work, and adding a new envelope with fresh materials and finishes to the exterior face of the existing building.”



Construction of the project will follow a six-month schedule and is estimated to cost approximately $ 4.2 million. By reusing the existing structure, Rockworth is able to keep the cost of construction down which ultimately translates into lower rents for future tenants.

“We are very familiar with the medical community in that part of town and many doctors have updated their offices as much as possible, but at some point there needs to be a massive overhaul,” Johnson said. “We are the first group that is willing to come in, retrofit a building, and provide a completely new interior and exterior which will allow us to keep doctors in their same geographic location, and at rents that are still favorable to them.”

Though annually recognized as one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the United States, citizens and officials throughout the Salt Lake Valley have raised concerns about the need to not only develop new neighborhoods and commercial areas, but also redevelop existing neighborhoods and areas with strong demographics that suffer from building obsolescence. Pre-leasing continues as crews begin the $4.2 million renovationn on the Doxey-Hatch building in Millcreek. Half of the structure will be demolished and the remaining half will be retrofitted introducing affordable medical office space to medical professionals in the St. Marks Hospital community. Rockworth believes by reinvesting in these areas, the long-term viability of historically relevant neighborhoods will be ensured as well as promote similar reinvestment of surrounding parcels.

"It’s been a real privilege to be a part of the design team on the Doxey-Hatch building," said Justin John, vice president of pre-construction services at Rimrock. "In my experience, developers and builders sometimes get a bad reputation for disrupting a natural setting and animal habitat by building a building with a big parking lot. This building is recycled as much as possible. Rockworth is actually adding more green space. It’s encouraging to see some fresh ideas."

The Doxey-Hatch building, renamed as the Evergreen Office Plaza, is scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2014.



ABOUT ROCKWORTH COMPANIES, LLC

Founded in 1996, Rockworth Companies, LLC is a single family, multi-family, retail, and professional office developer throughout the Western United States. Rockworth’s primary focus is on developing housing and office space in underserved markets bearing in mind fiscal and environmental responsibility.

For more information about Rockworth, please visit rockworthco.com