Ryan Companies Pitches Blaine Medical Project

Is Blaine a healthy market for developing new medical office buildings? Minneapolis-based Ryan Companies US Inc. has confidence in the market for the northeast metro suburb. The developer announced plans for the Blaine Health Center, a proposed two-story, 50,000-square-foot medical office building.
 
After spending more than a year looking at all available sites in Blaine, Erwin Effler III, vice president of real estate development for Ryan, said that he determined that the site at 11161 Ulysses Avenue NE in Blaine on Highway 65 was the best piece of land in the city for a new medical office project.
 
Ryan’s site is between an existing Noran Neurological Clinic building and a future Twin Cities Orthopedics clinic. In January, the Blaine City Council approved plans for a TCO’s new 50,000-square-foot building in Blaine. TCO’s clinic is slated to open in the spring of 2018.
 
“That strip of land there is really becoming ‘medical row’,” said Effler. “Blaine’s a pretty tight market.”
 
Ryan does not have any leases signed yet for its project and would need to have commitments for at least half of the building before it would start construction.
 
“We’ve got several interested parties,” said Effler. “There’s plenty of demand in Blaine.”
 
Ryan has tapped Ramsey-based Premier Commercial Properties LLC, a firm with deep experience in the northern suburbs, to handle marketing for the medical office project.
 
The developer has several medical office projects in its pipeline. Ryan is under construction on a 40,000-square-foot medical office project in Brooklyn Park that will be anchored by PrairieCare and recently completed a 26,000-square-foot building in Maple Grove that is fully leased to Park Nicollet.
 
Effler noted that Ryan is also encouraged by the demographics and strong population growth in Blaine. A report from the Metropolitan Council ranked Blaine third (behind Minneapolis and St. Paul) for adding the largest number of residents from 2010 to 2015.
 
According to the Met Council’s statistics Blaine’s population grew by 5,994 residents to a total of 63,180 in 2015. That marks a population increase of 10.5 percent over five years.