New medical office space has a competitive edge in attracting tenants: not only is it new, it's been designed to better align with the requirements of the Affordable Care Act.

NGKF’s Global Healthcare Services executive managing director Garth Hogan tells us the Affordable Care Act is reshaping healthcare, and with it, what medical office space needs to be. Recently, along with associate director John Scruggs, Garth repped Accretive Realty Advisors, the owner of the newly developed 40k SF San Juan Medical Center in San Juan Capistrano, in the facility's total pre-leasing to four medical-oriented tenants.

Garth says San Juan Medical Center is the first Class-A MOB developed in San Juan Capistrano in the past 25 years, adding there was a strong amount of interest from medical tenants throughout the region during construction. One reason is because the property was designed with the ACA in mind: it includes segregated employee parking, easy ingress and egress, covered patient drop-off, and a lot of free surface parking to accommodate higher volumes of patients.

Accretive Realty principal Thomas LeBeau says the demand for efficient healthcare real estate continues to grow. "The marketplace is demanding highly efficient, visible and quality medical office buildings," he says, in part because of the ACA. Thomas says there's a deficiency, especially in South Orange County, of new medical office space to support the client and technical demands of today’s environment. San Juan Medical Center is located at the northwest corner of Rancho Viejo Road and Golf Club Drive, directly off Ortega Highway.