Novant Health officials plan to bring outpatient clinics to two floors of the former Verizon Wireless call center in midtown Wilmington.
 
Health care real estate firm Flagship Health Properties acquired the three-story, 153,526-square-foot building at 3601 Converse Road last week for $21 million, according to a deed and a news release issued Wednesday. Novant Health will establish outpatient clinics on the building’s second and third floors starting next year, the release stated.
 
The former call center was the focus of a major economic development announcement for Wilmington two decades ago when state officials expected Verizon to bring more than 1,200 jobs to the Port City.
 
The call center was established in 2004, and Verizon was awarded more than $7 million from the Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG) for creating the promised jobs by 2005, a year earlier than required, according to previous Business Journal articles.
 
When the pandemic hit the U.S. in March 2020, Verizon sent 90% of its workforce home, including customer service and telesales employees. 
 
Although Verizon officials initially told the Business Journal they had no plans to close the facility, the building and its surrounding 17.5 acres were purchased in January 2022 by ENO Wilmington LLC for $16.5 million. Less than a month later, Live Oak Bank acquired the property for $18.3 million, according to property records.
 
Flagship Health Properties saw the potential in converting the building into medical offices, stated Gerald Quattlebaum, the company’s executive vice president of acquisitions, in the release. 
 
“With the current high cost of construction, repurposing a former office building certainly sounds like a great idea, but often the reality is there are just too many compatibility and timing challenges to justify the investment,” he wrote. “However, in this instance, we were able to identify a property that was well-suited for medical conversion, and couple that with the dominant local health system and physician providers to address a need within the market.”
 
For Novant Health, the facility was attractive because of its central location in Wilmington and its proximity to other Novant clinics, Ernie Bovio, president of Novant Health Coastal Region and Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center, said on Wednesday. The site is, for example, less than 2 miles from Novant Health NHRMC.
 
Novant officials also saw potential in the amount of space the building offered to accommodate the health system’s ongoing growth, Bovio said.
 
“It made a lot of sense for us to be able to lock in over 100,000 square feet of medical office space to continue our expansion,” he said. “We're really out of medical office space right now, and so to continue to grow, we just really needed to secure that space.”
 
To keep up with the area’s population growth, Novant Health plans to recruit between 60 to 70 new providers, physicians and advanced practice professionals in the coming years, Bovio said, and those medical professionals will all need space to practice. 
 
The former Verizon building will house a variety of services, including an OB/GYN clinic. It will also house specialists in pulmonary medicine and pain management along with endocrinology and rheumatology – two specialties for which it can be difficult to recruit providers, Bovio said. The building will also house other lab services including radiology, pharmacy and some infusion chairs.
 
Many of the services will be moved from smaller clinics in the Wilmington area to give the specialties room to grow with more providers and physicians. Bovio said he expects the needed renovations and upfits to take between 18 months and two years to complete. 
 
The upfits are designed to be flexible for future expansion and use by any specialty. The flexibility is a new approach Novant Health is bringing to other medical office buildings, including at Autumn Hall and in Scotts Hill. 
 
“It's something we're moving towards,” Bovio said, “and with 100,000 square feet of space, it's wise for it to be adaptable and flexible for future use.”
 
While Novant Health currently plans to occupy only the building’s second and third floor, the health system has first right of refusal for the first floor, Bovio said, and potential plans are in the works for the first-floor area.
 
Flagship Health Properties will provide property management and asset management services for the building. The Charlotte-headquartered firm serves clients throughout the Southeast and Southern Mid-Atlantic, according to the news release.
 
“Flagship is in the business of finding creative solutions to bring value to its investors and health care provider clients alike,” stated Thorn Baccich, Flagship’s executive vice president of development, in the release. 
 
“With this project we have achieved both. We are grateful for the opportunity to partner with Novant Health to improve the efficiency and access to critical outpatient services in the Wilmington region.”