Medical office vacancies in Metro Detroit 

 11/24/2009 

Excerpt from Detroit News Story

In a region accustomed to foreclosure notices and vacant buildings, an industry until recently considered thriving -- health care -- is increasingly seeing the recession turn its workplaces into empty shells.

The market for medical office space, once hailed as a safe bet for real estate developers, is falling into a slump unseen in decades after years of aggressive building oversaturated Metro Detroit even before the financial crisis hit.

For hospitals, the new developments were particularly attractive because they offered a way to locate their own doctors in lucrative suburban markets and have them refer patients back to their major medical campuses, said Bill Lichwalla, president of Plante & Moran CRESA, a commercial real estate and consulting firm in Southfield. "By building a network of doctors, you create a pipeline to feed more patients to the hospital," he added.