Building the future for a Miami healthcare provider

NCB helps finance a facility transformation for Florida’s Care Resource Community Health Centers

How does a non-profit health center finance a $33 million renovation and expansion of its medical facility when that structure is its only source of collateral?

That was the challenge facing Care Resource Community Health Centers when it set out to address the growing healthcare demands of midtown Miami, Florida.

Care Resource is a Federally Qualified Health Center that provides comprehensive health and supportive services at four clinics in Miami. It serves low-income minorities, at-risk populations, children, the elderly, LGBT adolescents and adults, and residents of both Miami-Dade County and Broward County.

Its Midtown Miami center had far surpassed its capacity to meet the needs of patients, providers and staff. Moreover, Care Resource leaders expected significant growth in demand for services over the next five years.

What was needed was more space for expanded services and parking. And that would require a transformation of the nonprofit’s existing 22,000-square-foot, two-story building on Biscayne Boulevard.

Enter NCB, which is committed to ensuring the success of healthcare nonprofits.

In 2019, the bank closed two loan transactions totaling $15.5 million to support a $32.8 million New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) financing package to rehabilitate and expand Care Resource’s midtown Miami facility.

With that financing, Care Resource broke ground in June 2019 on its larger, modernized Midtown Miami Health Center and administrative headquarters. The new building will be a seven-story, 55,000-square-foot, state of the art community health center “that brings all of our services under one roof,” said Rick Siclari, CEO of Care Resources.

“The future we’re building is one of innovation and state-of-the-art healthcare at its best,” Siclari added.

The expansion will double the number of individuals Care Resource can serve annually to 21,400 within three years. The renovation also adds a new pediatrics unit plus expanded medical, dental and behavioral healthcare services. Three stories of much-needed parking space above the clinic and a new retail pharmacy are included in the expansion. The upgraded facility will create 257 new fulltime jobs.

Participants in the NMTC financing package with NCB included Primary Care Development Corporation and Community Health Center Capital Fund, both Community Development Finance Institutions; and SunTrust Community Capital.

“This was a large, complex transaction,” said Bob Montanari, NCB senior vice president. “A lot of boxes had to be checked. But we all came together to develop the structure Care Resource needed to meet its strategic objective of expanding to meet the healthcare needs of the Miami community.”