In an effort to resist the staid tradition of naming businesses after the locality in which they operate, Westchester Medical Group, a physician-run, privately owned medical group in Westchester County, rebranded itself in 2009 as WestMed Medical.
But besides distancing itself from an aging brand name, there was another reason behind the repositioning.
“Everything in the economy is shrinking, so we just shrunk our name,” joked Dr. Simeon Schwartz, the company’s founding president.
Last month, WestMed signed a 15-year lease to transform a 28,000-square-foot space at 171 Huguenot Avenue in New Rochelle into a state-of-the-art medical multiuse health care facility. The renovations are expected to be completed by the middle of 2012.
“They have been in a position to expand their service reach,” said Frank Tomasulo, a senior vice president at CBRE (CBRE) who represented WestMed in the deal. “I can’t point to one entity that has taken on more new locations with the amount of square footage than they have over the last few years.”
Budd Wisenberg and William Cuddy Jr., both of CBRE, represented landlord Silwis LLC in the transaction.
Previously, the building served as the headquarters of the international shoemaker Bally North America, which housed a showroom, executive offices and retail space there.
Bally vacated the building in 2003, around the same time the asset was purchased by Siliwis, which then moved Bel-Aqua Pool Supply, a wholesale business the company owns, into a 100,000-square-foot warehouse at the base of the building.
The new space will eventually become a “polyclinic,” which, Dr. Schwartz explained, will offer patients a one-stop medical location for primary, specialty and urgent care. The aim of these polyclinics, he said, is to provide low-cost care in a more convenient setting.
