Medical care centers are heeding the call from leading health professionals to decentralize health care and bringing the healing to the people, instead of making the broken among us travel into metropolitan areas to get better.
Several projects are under way, either recently finished or in the pipeline to offer more medical care facilities and services to suburban populations:

• The Bulfinch Cos. last year paid $50 million for the nearly empty, aged Atrium Mall with the hopes of repositioning it as a medical office and services center. Industry experts expect spillover from the Longwood Medical Area, as well as patients from the suburbs who don’t want to go into the city, to make the project a success. It is being marketed as Atrium Center at Chestnut Hill, and is a 286,000-square-foot redevelopment that will offer both medical and office space, with possible retail space on the first level. The facility is on Route 9 in the Chestnut Hill section of Newton.
• Much of the activity is taking place on the South Shore. Campanelli Construction Co. is building a 80,000-square-foot South Shore Medical Center – part of Atrius Health – for FoxRock Properties. The facility, on Longwater Drive in Norwell, is slated for completion early this year. It will include 100 examination rooms and 70 medical offices.
• Campanelli recently completed 2 Pond Park Medical Center in Hingham, an 81,708-square-facility built for AW Perry. Tenants include South Shore Hospital Center for Orthopedic, Spine, and Sports Medicine & South Shore Orthopedic Associates. The center, located along the South Shore’s Route 3 corridor, features a day surgery center with six surgery suites, a pain clinic and a diagnostic imaging center.
• Braintree-based Flatley Co. is building a new 80,000-square-foot medical office building for Granite Medical Group, part of the healthcare alliance Atrius Health, in Quincy’s Crown Colony Office Park.

Email: jcronin@thewarrengroup.com