Curahealth, a portfolio company of Nautic Partners, is selling the real estate assets of a rehabilitation hospital in New Orleans operated by its subsidiary, Cobalt Rehabilitation. Birmingham, Alabama-based The Sanders Trust will pay $29 million for the 60-bed inpatient rehab facility.
The Cobalt Rehabilitation Hospital is a Class A, 65,345-square-foot facility located less than two miles from the new Louisiana State University and Veteran Administration hospitals that have approximately 1,000 acute care beds. Built in 2016, it serves a wide range of physical rehabilitation patients with conditions such as stroke, trauma, hip fracture, brain injuries, concussions, orthopedic and Parkinson’s disease.
This sector has been fairly quiet since we saw a lot of M&A in 2016. The Sanders Trust develops and acquires outpatient healthcare-related properties on or near hospital campuses. It has developed or acquired medical properties in 27 states.
This is the REIT’s first deal in 2020. It announced two acquisitions in 2019, one for the Bakersfield Heart Hospital (47 beds) in California, a 85,971-square-foot Class A facility built in 2000. The price was not disclosed. The second deal, for $21.5 million, targeted a medical office building in Juno Beach, Florida. The 63,108-square-foot facility houses the Beach House Recovery Center, which continues to be operated by the detoxification center.
Curahealth of Dallas, Texas acquired all Cobalt operations in July 2019 for an undisclosed price. At the time, Cobalt operated rehabilitation hospitals in Surprise, Arizona; New Orleans, Louisiana; Fargo, North Dakota and El Paso and Houston Heights, Texas. Since then it has begun construction on an inpatient rehabilitation facility in southern Indiana.
We expect to see more de novo deals from these entities. Curahealth is working with The Sanders Trust to help develop new inpatient rehabilitation hospitals in target markets across the country.
