HCA HealthONE, one of the metro area's largest hospital operators, has paid $14.5 million for a retail property in Wheat Ridge, with plans to turn the site into a medical campus featuring an emergency room and medical office space. The purchase covers roughly 53,000 square feet of retail space on a 4.5-acre parcel at 7615 W. 38th Ave., a property long known as the Wilmore Center.
The deal, reported by BusinessDen, closed this month and was previously owned by CentrePoint Properties, a local real estate investor. According to a HCA spokeswoman, the planned health park will sit adjacent to the company's existing Clear Creek Surgery Center at 7809 W. 38th Ave., and HCA HealthONE has said the project will expand healthcare access for area patients and families. Separately, as reported by Connect CRE, HCA HealthONE bought the Wilmore Center at 7615 W. 38th Ave. for $14.5 million, with plans to bring medical office space and emergency services to the site.
CentrePoint Properties had purchased the property for $10.25 million back in 2021, per Connect CRE's reporting, meaning the sale to HCA HealthONE came in well above that price just a few years later. At the time of the latest sale, the asset was 84 percent occupied by 15 tenants, according to Real Estate Business Online. The tenant mix includes retail, food and medical uses, with 68 percent of the leased area already occupied by medical-related tenants, the outlet reports — a detail that suggests the property was already trending toward the kind of use HCA HealthONE now plans to expand.
Conflicting Figures on the Property's Size
Reports vary slightly on the exact dimensions of the site. Connect CRE describes the Wilmore Center as spanning nearly 52,750 square feet on 5.18 acres with 236 parking spaces, while BusinessDen's reporting puts the figure closer to 53,000 square feet on 4.5 acres. Real Estate Business Online, meanwhile, pegs the property at 52,743 square feet across two single-story buildings on roughly 5 acres, also citing 236 parking spaces. The discrepancies appear to stem from different measurement methods among the outlets, and none of the sources has reconciled the gap.
Jon Hendrickson and Aaron Johnson of Cushman & Wakefield represented the seller in the transaction, according to the same report from Real Estate Business Online. HCA HealthONE has an existing Clear Creek Surgery Center adjacent to the planned health park. As of Connect CRE's reporting, HCA HealthONE had not yet disclosed its full redevelopment plans for the site.
Part of a Broader Shift Toward Retail-to-Medical Conversions
The Wheat Ridge purchase fits into a wider pattern across the health care industry, where providers are increasingly converting former retail sites into care facilities to get closer to patients and relieve pressure on crowded emergency rooms, according to the Denver Post. Freestanding emergency rooms built by HCA typically run about 12,000 square feet and cost an average of $15 million to construct, the newspaper notes — a scale that lines up with the kind of emergency services HCA HealthONE has signaled for the Wheat Ridge site.
Other Denver-area health systems are pursuing similar strategies. AdventHealth is building an emergency room on the first floor of an 88,000-square-foot facility at The Aurora Highlands, with an opening expected in fall 2026, per the Denver Post's reporting. Whether HCA HealthONE's Wheat Ridge project will follow a similar timeline remains unclear, as no construction schedule or opening date has been made public for the new health park.
