Nashville Moves on With Med Mart Plans

Nashville, Tenn.’s entry in the race to be the first city to have a national medical mart that will offer tradeshow and permanent display space to medical device makers may have taken a temporary lead.

It came with Market Center Management Co.’s Nov. 30 announcement that it will build a 2 million square foot, $250 million facility for permanent and temporary medical device exhibits on the footprint of the current Nashville Convention Center.

A companion proposal for a new government-funded 375,000 sq. ft. Music City Center at another location in Nashville is in the final stage of approval. Construction on that project could begin next year and is expected to be completed by 2012.

Meanwhile, according to Dallas-based Market Center Management and local government officials, construction at the old site would begin next year as well, and the new Nashville Medical Trade Center could be open by 2013.

“We’ve been working on getting a new convention center built for 10 years,” said Nashville Mayor Karl Dean. “This solves the problem of what to do with the old one.”

MCMC President and CEO Bill Winsor said his company is working “as we speak” on financing for the project.

“We feel strongly that the receptivity to this is going to be strong,” he added.

In the past, Winsor has pointed out he expects the Nashville Medical Trade Center will generate health care tradeshow activity for the proposed new Music City Center as well.

He also reiterated earlier statements there was room in the national market for only one medical mart, and he expects his project to be the one the medical device industry coalesces around.

“We don’t really feel the industry will support more than one,” Winsor said, “so it is important to be first. We feel this is the right community and the right state. Manufacturers will probably endorse one center, and it will be this one.”

Similar medical mart projects are in the planning stages in Cleveland and New York City. Earlier this year, it appeared the Cleveland project was further along the development pipeline than the Nashville project. However, Merchandise Mart Properties Inc., the Cleveland Medical Mart developer, may have run into problems recently.

In June, MMPI Senior Vice President Mark Falanga told Tradeshow Week that his company would spend $32 million immediately to convert Cleveland’s historic existing Public Auditorium into exhibit space that could be used to host health care-related tradeshows.

“Our expectation is that, within a year, we’ll be up and running,” Falanga said at the time.

However, that was before closer inspection of the 90-year-old Public Auditorium revealed renovations to the building’s heating, cooling, mechanical and electrical systems would cost close to $85 million, at least $50 million more than originally anticipated.

Falanga did not return calls to TSW for comment.

Cuyahoga County officials also have complained about monthly payments going to MMPI, despite the fact that little to no progress has been made on construction and MMPI has yet to sign firm contracts with any tenants. Cuyahoga County Administrator Jim McCafferty has called for suspension of the $333,333 monthly payments to MMPI from the county for the project. MMPI already has collected $2.3 million under a previously arranged development agreement.

Though officials with the New York project, World Product Centre, announced last summer they already had landed potential clients, they have missed what they said was their October start date for construction. They have not released any public statements about the delay and did not return calls to TSW.

Dean and Tennessee economic development officials said the proposed medical mart would open the state to the growing medical device market, particularly since most of the companies buying space for either tradeshows or permanent displays would be from elsewhere.

“The health care industry is a significant economic engine for our state,” said Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, “and this project expands that footprint, representing a major investment in our state’s health care economy.”

Earlier this year, Positively Cleveland officials said the 300,000 sq. ft. convention center and four-story, 100,000 sq. ft. medical mart with permanent showroom space for medical device and pharmaceutical markets would be open by the second quarter of 2013. That prediction was made before the recent difficulties.

In the past, Falanga has told TSW he did not take Market Center Management’s Nashville plans seriously.

“We don’t take this as a serious threat,” he said in June. “We started contemplating (the Cleveland Medical Mart) in May 2005. Over those four years, we’ve heard about similar concepts in New York City; Orlando; Denver; Rochester, Minn.; and now Nashville. Not one has come to fruition.”