Cory Frank, vice president of business development and project management for Nigro Construction Inc., and Melissa Katz, CCO for the Comprehensive Digestive Institute of Nevada, pose with a finish board in a nurses’ station in the Saint Rose Parkway office in Henderson Friday, April 5, 2024. Nigro Construction converted the building from a financial services company to an office for the Comprehensive Digestive Institute.
Monday, April 15, 2024 | 2 a.m.
The Comprehensive Digestive Institute of Nevada’s location in the southeast Las Vegas Valley boasts nearly a dozen exam rooms, a collaborative office space for physicians, an open-concept nursing station and a slew of other amenities to benefit patients and providers alike.
It’s almost impossible to tell that, in a former life, the building was not equipped for medical use at all. In fact, it was a financial-services firm.
Converting vacant office space for clinic use is a cost-saver compared with buying new real estate because, even if walls have to be put up or torn down, the foundation is already there, said Melissa Katz, chief operating officer of Comprehensive Digestive Institute of Nevada.
“From the perspective of us, meaning the buyer, it makes more sense to buy some of these unoccupied office spaces, regardless of what they were previously used for,” Katz said at her office in Henderson, where patients milled in and out of the waiting room and nurses hopped between exam rooms. “To rebuild, refurbish, redevelop them to meet our needs.”
A 2022 report from Commercial Real Estate Development Association predicted that medical, life science and multifamily spaces could fill vacant office space, which spiked during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Conversion over construction is more environmentally friendly, time-efficient and easier when it comes to meeting zoning and permit requirements, according to the report.
Katz and an increasing number of companies like Comprehensive Digestive Institute, which partners with Las Vegas-based Nigro Construction to convert office space for clinic use, seem to prove that theory.
“So many people went to that work-from-home structure,” Katz said of the pandemic era. “And I think there’s a lot of real estate, commercial real estate, around the valley that has become more available.”
UNLV professor and environmental psychologist Dak Kopec said the trend of converting vacant office space is not unique to Las Vegas — it’s happening all over the country.
Many retail spaces are emptying out because of online giants like Amazon, he said, which coincides with a trend of specialization in health care.
“Where we once went to a primary-care doctor and the primary-care doctor was able to do most everything, most people are getting referred out to a specialist or they’re getting referred out to somebody else,” he said. “So there’s more of that multiperson involvement, and when you bring in more parts or more pieces of the puzzle, so to speak, you need more space for that to happen.”
He cited the example of a patient who has a blotch on their skin that they think may be cancerous.
“Most primary physicians now will take a look at it and say, ‘Yeah, well, we should have it checked out,’ and then refer you to a dermatologist,” Kopec said. “Well, they need an office. You need a place to do that. And using the vacant space that’s already there through former retail — it’s just a natural fit.”
There’s a lot to consider when converting office space into health care space, said Cory Frank, vice president of business development and project manager for Nigro Construction. It’s his company’s job to make sure that any space is functional for their client’s business model, Frank said.
“We just enjoy it,” Frank said. “I mean, we’re really nerds at it.”
Using the construction of Comprehensive Digestive Institute’s clinic as an example, Frank said there’s usually seven or eight possible floor plans that Nigro and the client come up with. Next come the approvals, he said, then the design of mechanical, electrical and plumbing.
“When you start thinking about what they need, how a doctor sits at an exam room table and how he turns around and writes his notes — all those little details (are) the stuff that we ask,” he said. “So we spend a lot of time up front in making sure that, when we decide to put a floor plan together on paper, it’s right.”
Katz said relies on Frank and Nigro Construction to seek out or evaluate existing real estate for Comprehensive, which has two office locations and another on the way. The latter will be built in a decades-old VA treatment center that Katz said will be converted into a clinic and ambulatory surgery center.
“Many of them are not medical buildings, such as this one, and he just goes through with his team and tells us — is this a good buy? Is this not a good buy?” Katz said of the institute’s relationship with Frank. “And here we are today, and continuing on a big path for growth.”
It’s ultimately more efficient to modify an existing space than to build something new, Kopec said.
“It’s more sustainable because now you don’t have to tear down something,” he said. “You’re repurposing something that’s already existing, and the infrastructure is usually already there.”
He doesn’t see this trend slowing down in the foreseeable future, Kopec added, especially as the UNLV School of Medicine continues to churn out physicians, and an expansion of Las Vegas’ health care market becomes increasingly more important with the city’s growth.
“The city is trying to meet all the needs of its population,” he said. “And retrofitting existing retail spaces, it’s certainly more cost-effective than building from ground-up, and it’s friendlier to the overall environment.”
Nigro has worked on clinics in every medical field, Frank said, from orthopedics to ophthalmology. He pointed to a pain management group that is converting a space in northwest Las Vegas, in a building that has just been sitting there for 10 years.
“They saw a need just like (Comprehensive) did, and they’re capitalizing it,” he said. “And they’re putting a medical facility right in the middle of a retail plaza. So, it’s really cool.”
Las Vegas operations like Comprehensive are taking a “leap of faith,” Frank said, departing from hospitals and into office buildings where there may be a need in the community. Nigro’s responsibility is just to provide them with the best-quality space possible, he said.
Comprehensive is trying to raise the standard of care in Las Vegas, Katz said, and to offer local patients the tertiary care they need. That means growing out into different communities.
“That’s why we do what we do for this community, along with Nigro,” she said. “They just make us look good.”
katieann.mccarver@gmg vegas.com / 702-259-4059 / @_katieann13_