Cedar Health to rehab long-empty San Antonio hospital

A long-empty hospital in San Antonio’s Medical Center district is getting a new lease on life.
Cedar Health Group bought the former Nix Behavioral Health Hospital at 1975 Babcock Road from American Momentum Bank for an undisclosed price, the San Antonio Express-News reported.

New Jersey-based Cedar Health, doing business as Alpine Specialty Hospital, took out a $7.8 million loan from Frost Bank to buy the 61,400-square-foot building, which is about $127 a foot. The new owners plan to spend more than $5 million on renovations, bringing the investment to at least $208 per square foot.

Cedar Health buys and develops “long-term, acute and mental health facilities throughout the country,” according to a news release from Oldham Goodwin, the Bryan real estate firm that oversaw the sale.

“Recent statistics show San Antonio as the fourth-worst city in the U.S. after Dallas and Houston for mental health care and maintenance,” Cedar Health CEO Mark Tress said in the release. “We hope our building will serve as an important resource for the continuum of care not yet being properly addressed by the current medical establishment.”

Nix Behavioral Health was shut down in 2019 when Los Angeles-based Prospect Medical Holdings closed several facilities in the Nix Health system.

“This building was a blight for three years in an otherwise robust and vibrant San Antonio Medical Center,” Clint Oldham of Oldham Goodwin, said. “We are excited to see Cedar Health put this facility back into service. This was our team’s second significant trade in the San Antonio Medical Center in 2022, an area we intend to remain active in.”

Back in November, Big Sky Medical bought the 38,370-square-foot Alamo Quarry Center office building along Highway 281, just north of Alamo Heights, for which it borrowed about $192 million from BMO Harris Bank.

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— Victoria Pruitt