Boston Children's Hospital Leases West Palm Beach Office Tower

Boston Children’s Hospital has signed a lease for a specialty clinic inside the Esperante Corporate Center, a 17-story office tower at 222 Lakeview Avenue in downtown West Palm Beach, landlord Related Ross confirmed, The Real Deal reported Oct. 29. The deal gives the Harvard-affiliated pediatric hospital its first clinical location outside the Boston area and its first foothold in Florida.

Why it matters

A marquee pediatric name signing into class-A office space is a signal South Florida’s commercial landlords want: downtown towers converting floors to medical use without the zoning fight of a ground-up hospital. Related Ross executive vice president Jordan Rathlev told The Real Deal and Yahoo News that Boston Children’s choice of West Palm Beach is “a testament to how much this market has grown,” and said the clinic “adds another exceptional resource for parents and families” in Palm Beach County. Neither the hospital nor Related Ross has disclosed the size of the space or the lease term, and this story will update if either party releases those figures.

The numbers

The Esperante Corporate Center is a 17-story tower that has changed hands and partners multiple times since 2013, most recently taking on Related Companies as a part owner in 2021. Boston Children’s clinic is expected to open next year, meaning 2027, according to the landlord. No square footage, rent, or lease-term figures have been made public.

What’s next

The clinic lease is a smaller, faster-moving piece of a bigger question Boston Children’s has not yet answered: whether it builds a full stand-alone hospital in the West Palm Beach market, its first outside Massachusetts. The hospital told the Palm Beach Post in September it had explored co-locating that larger project at the site of Cleveland Clinic’s planned downtown hospital but found the property too small for both systems. Cleveland Clinic’s own 200-bed hospital, the city’s first new hospital in more than a century, is scheduled to open in late 2029, a timeline that gives Boston Children’s room to decide. For now, the signed deal is the Esperante clinic. The bigger project remains unconfirmed. Watch South Florida’s medical office corridor for the next filing.