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Park Ridge buys cinema land for health campus

Staking a claim on Hendersonville's busiest gateway, Park Ridge Health has purchased the old Four Seasons Cinema facility for a development that it called a health campus.

 


Park Ridge closed on the sale of the property on June 20, paying $1.8 million for the 3.25-acre site that commercial real estate brokers Winston W. "Rusty" Pulliam Jr. and Jeffrey C. Justus had bought on May 2 for $1.3 million.
The Fletcher-based hospital did not provide more details about the facility, although it is believed to be looking at a larger home for its sports medicine and physical therapy facilities. Justus said while he was not at liberty to describe details of Park Ridge's plans, the health care provider was looking at a two-story building of about 32,000-square-feet.
The property on Four Seasons Boulevard west of Duncan Hill Road is on the busiest thoroughfare leading into downtown Hendersonville.
"Park Ridge Health is very excited to continue our investment in the Hendersonville community as together we work towards economic revitalization of this property as a key gateway into our historic downtown," Graham Fields, assistant to Park Ridge Health President Jimm Bunch, said in a statement. "For over a century Park Ridge Health has served as a leading community health partner and we have always adapted to meet the needs of our region. We are truly grateful for the warm welcome and look forward to sharing more details as this new health campus develops."
A new medical complex would be the fourth major construction project in the past two years by three competing health care providers and further evidence that the fierce competition for patients continues in the two largest counties in Western North Carolina.
Pardee Hospital and Mission Health formed a joint venture to build a new health campus in Fletcher on the Buncombe County line. Park Ridge will open a four-story 25,000-square-foot medical center on Long Shoals Road at I-26 later this year. And Pardee joined Wingate University and BRCC in an agreement for a new building on the Pardee campus in which the hospital is entitled to lease up to 25,000 square feet of space.
Park Ridge says it has invested more than $40 million in expanding health care infrastructure in Henderson and Buncombe counties over the past five years.
A part of Adventist Health System, Park Ridge had revenue of $129 million against expenses of $122.6 million in 2012, according to a report it filed with the IRS.
The Four Seasons Cinema property, at 1300 Seventh Avenue East, is valued on the tax roll at $1.8 million — $1.059 million for the land and $743,000 for the building. Justus and Pulliam held the cinema property for just seven weeks before selling it to Park Ridge at a $500,000 profit. Justus said he and Pulliam, a prominent Asheville developer, pitched the site to Publix, the Florida-based supermarket chain, but could never consummate a deal. At the time, the two developers received an endorsement from the Hendersonville City Council and the state DOT to connect the property to Four Seasons Boulevard with a new road and traffic signal. Park Ridge's statement did not say whether it planned to request a similar link, although Fields, the hospital's local government affairs official, has been looking into it.
"I guess our comment has been that previously the council supported it but there's been no formal request," said City Manager John Connet. "Graham Fields asked me for a contact at DOT."