Inside Laser Spine Institute's $56 million deal for a new Westshore office development
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Sep 3, 2014

Bill Horne admits it: Agreeing to move Laser Spine Institute into a $56 million, custom-built office campus was a bit scary.

"I've never signed a contract with that kind of financial commitment before, so I can't say I didn't pause a second when I was signing the lease,” Horne, the CEO of Laser Spine, said Wednesday. "But I know this is a business where we get so many inquiries in terms of people wanting to come have a procedure at LSI - it wasn't a matter of, ‘If you build it, will they come.' We already have the requests.”

Highwoods Properties Inc. announced Wednesday that it will build the 176,000-square-foot campus in Avion Park, which is in Tampa's Westshore district. The six-story building will contain surgical facilities and office space for LSI's headquarters operations and support staff for its regional surgery centers in other locations.

LSI performs "minimally invasive” outpatient surgical procedures for neck and back issues.

When the building is complete in early 2016, LSI will consolidate two Tampa locations at the new site. Those two locations represent 100,000 square feet of space that will be back on the market. Those blocks of space - 60,000 square feet in Harbor View and 40,000 square feet in Rocky Point - could be absorbed quickly, as office users have been more active this year, and there are very few large contiguous blocks of new space available.

Looking for new office space in Tampa is challenging for any business that needs the type of space LSI did. The largest block of top-tier office is 150,000 square feet, in a suburban office park that's also owned by Highwoods, which left LSI with little choice but to build new. The first floor of the new building will be patient services, with the surgical center on the second floor.

The Tampa expansion is driven by LSI's nationwide growth, Horne said.The company has regional surgery centers in Scottsdale, Ariz., Philadelphia and Oklahoma City and is on track to open three new regional surgery centers in Cleveland, Cincinnati and St. Louis. A facility in Rhode Island will open in early 2015. The new headquarters will support those new facilities and increase patient capacity by 25 percent to 30 percent. The new facility will have two additional operating rooms.

About 80 percent of LSI's Tampa patients are from outside of the Bay area, Horne said, which was a big factor in the company's decision to locate in Westshore, in close proximity to the airport and several hotels.

"A lot of patients continue to want to fly in from all over the world,” he said.

Ashley Gurbal Kritzer is a reporter for the Tampa Bay Business Journal.