Number of Medical Offices Planned or under Construction for Stockton, Calif.

While 106,000 square feet of medical office space is under construction in a four-building project in northeast Stockton, a Los Angeles-area developer is talking with A.G. Spanos Cos. about a multistory medical office project right next to the Stockton developer's new company headquarters in Spanos Park West.

The Weber Ranch Professional Park, also known as the Stockton Medical Plaza Office campus, will sit on nearly 8 acres between Heald College, a business school, on the west at 1605 E. March Lane and WinCo Foods, a discount warehouse grocery store, on the east at 5110 Montauban Ave.

The office complex, at East March Lane and Montauban Avenue, will be sold as "condos." That is, medical offices will be built out within each of the four shells for individual physicians.

Some space might be sold to medical-oriented businesses as well, said Nancy Ann Queirolo, office specialist for First Commercial Real Estate, the Stockton firm handling marketing and sales for the plaza project.

The overall office marketplace, including medical, has been heating up for a number of years because area growth has outstripped the office space being developed, said Kevin Dougherty, First Commercial broker/president.

The $15 million project is being developed by F&H Construction of Stockton, with company principal Charles Ferrell as the lead investor, Dougherty said.

Other investors are in the medical community, he said, and they want to create a "medical environment" in fast-growing northeast Stockton that is still only minutes from St. Joseph's Medical Center and Dameron Hospital.

Ninety percent of the space in the first two buildings, roughly half the project, already has been sold, he said.

"They're surprised things have moved so quickly in phase one," he said.

Meanwhile, Triad Partners Inc., an Irvine developer specializing in medical office development, approached Spanos a few months ago about building an office complex just north of the new Spanos office building, said Dean Plassaras, principal of P&A Consulting in Stockton, which is working with A.G. Spanos Cos. to develop all phases of Spanos Park West at Interstate 5 and Eight Mile Road.

Triad sees that part of north Stockton, which is relatively new and features several thousand upscale homes, as underserved by medical offices, Plassaras said.

The five-story Spanos building of nearly 150,000 square feet has the Spanos Cos. on the top floor, with the rest for other general business users.

Spanos has been approached by some medical groups about developing office space in that fast-growing part of Stockton, Plassaras said.

Triad has been working on plans for a Spanos Park West site that would be built, if the project comes about, on five or six acres of highly visible land just north of the Spanos office building, fronting I-5, he said.

"For us, it's a compatible use because of the underserved nature of a new community," he said.

Triad President Joseph Carroll didn't return phone calls for comment Tuesday afternoon.

Chris Foss, economic development director for the city of Dublin, said he's been working with Triad since the company approached the city about developing a medical-office center, much needed in the fast-growing area.

Although plans for a center probably won't go to city planners until early next year, Triad recently bought five or six acres for a proposed multistory center of 170,000 square feet, he said.

Plassaras said Triad has indicated it's envisioning a similar project for north Stockton.

In CB Richard Ellis' annual commercial real-estate market outlook early this year for San Joaquin County, the prediction saw more expansion from the medical community to accommodate population growth.

The January report cited as an example Sutter Gould Medical Foundation's plans to build a medical center for doctors and an emergency center on 25 acres at Hammer Lane and Don Avenue.

Shelly Cannon-Keely, office specialist for the Stockton office of CB Richard Ellis, said the condo office market is the most desirable in the marketplace.

"The condo market is very hot right now as investors and owners alike want to own," she said.

The Stockton Medical Plaza project will consist of two 24,000-square-foot buildings, one of 28,000 square feet and a third of 30,000 square feet. That total of 106,000 square feet is more than spacious enough to cover two football fields. There are 356 parking spaces planned.

Stockton physician Kulendu G. Vasavda is glad to hear about impending growth in medical-office spaces. He just went through the wringer in the last couple of months to find suitable space for a new office in order to make the switch from two years as a St. Joseph's Medical Center emergency-room doctor to a private family practice.

He didn't feel good about it because, even though he found a good spot, it took a lot of searching and there weren't very many leads, he said. His office is at 221 Tuxedo Court, Suite B, on the Miracle Mile.

The medical plaza, he said, sounds like a terrific project.

"There are not very many doctors' offices are over there, and there's a lot of new construction, a lot of new families moving in," Vasavda said.