Photo by Jon Anderson
Sunlight filters through a skylight in the new Medical Properties Trust headquarters in Liberty Park.
When Medical Properties Trust founder, chairman and CEO Edward Aldag Jr. and the board of directors decided in 2019 to build a new headquarters in Liberty Park, there was a definite vision.
“The vision was that we wanted to build the most environmentally friendly building we possibly could, and we wanted to build a building that was people friendly and had sunlight in as many places as we possibly could and just a place where people could come to work and enjoy being at work,” Aldag said.
Now, after moving into the new 108,000-square-foot building this year, Aldag believes they accomplished their goal — and with style.
The new facility, which sits at 10500 Liberty Parkway just 1.4 miles away from the previous leased headquarters in the 1000 Building on Urban Center Drive, is rife with environmental features.
Photos by Jon Anderson.
More than 1,000 solar panels — installed on top of an underground parking deck — provide energy for the building.
It has a net zero carbon and net zero energy footprint, producing 105% of the power needed to run the building with more than 1,000 solar energy panels mounted across the roof of a 200-space parking structure, Aldag said.
There are two 1,200-kilowatt-hour battery systems providing emergency redundancy and energy use efficiency. Medical Properties Trust is connected to Alabama Power’s energy grid as a backup but actually produces more power than the building needs and sells that excess to Alabama Power, Aldag said.
RAINWATER CAPTURED
Beneath the parking deck are two 25,000-gallon cisterns used to capture rainwater to provide water for the building. The building has its own filtration system and, combined with high-efficiency water fixtures, it uses 70% less water than a typical office building of its size, the company said.
Only the landscaping irrigation system and fire sprinkler system use water from Central Alabama Water, Aldag said.
And there is a 50% reduction in irrigation water use compared to a typical office building, achieved through the use of native plantings and an efficient irrigation system, said his son, Edward Aldag III, who works for Johnson Health Care Real Estate, which served as the construction management firm for the project.
The new headquarters disturbed only 13% of the 56-acre site, preserving the rest as a piedmont upland forest where a Drummond Co. coal mine was in operation until 1945, Aldag said.
Neighbors from the adjacent residential sections of Liberty Park were concerned the property was going to be stripped like the commercial land for The Bray at Liberty Park, but Medical Properties Trust was careful to carve out only the space it needed, the elder Aldag said.
Also, instead of building a towering structure, Medical Properties Trust’s new headquarters is built down into the ground. It’s not visible from Liberty Parkway, and even when you follow the winding driveway to the building, the structure remains almost invisible from the driveway due to the heavy landscaping cover.
ALABAMA LIMESTONE
Photos by Jon Anderson.
This is the view as you drive up to the 108,000-square-foot building that is built into the ground and largely hidden.
The building features limestone quarried from Muscle Shoals, and wood elements throughout the project include Douglas fir, southern yellow pine, spruce pine fir and walnut species, all contributing to the net zero carbon target, Aldag said.
Medical Properties Trust is seeking certification as a net zero carbon and net zero energy facility from the International Living Future Institute, LEED Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, and WELL Gold certification from the International WELL Building Institute.
“This was our one big opportunity to really build something that will save the planet, if you will,” Aldag said. “Do everything we can to protect the environment.”
That’s important to him, the board of directors and the company’s investors, especially its European investors, he said.
“We had an opportunity to show our commitment to this world and to the environment,” Aldag said. “We took a piece of property that almost 75 years ago was a coal mine and repurposed it. We didn’t cut every tree on the piece of property. We made it a real nice place for the community.”
The architectural firm for the project, Perkins & Will, really captured the essence of what Medical Properties Trust was seeking to do, Aldag said. “We just hit it off with them. They understood the vision,” he said. “The architects dubbed it the ‘unoffice office,’ and I think they nailed it.”
Hoar Construction was the general contractor for the job.
EMPLOYEE WELL-BEING
Aldag said he’s most proud of the way the building is designed with employee well-being in mind.
Photos by Jon Anderson.
Medical Properties Trust founder, chairman and CEO Edward Aldag Jr. at the new headquarters, which is built into the ground to blend into the environment and have a minimal impact.
Skylights and windows allow each employee work station to be within 25 feet of sunlight, he said.
“It’s a healthy building,” Aldag said. “It provides sunlight for everyone. It’s open space. Other than the exterior walls and glass walls, there aren’t many walls around. Coming to work in this building is healthier than somebody going to work in a typical office building.”
About 100 employees work in the building, but the auditorium is big enough to hold companywide meetings that include the 50 or so employees who work around the world, he said. There are about 20 employees in London, about 20 in Luxembourg and about 10 in New York City.
The headquarters also includes a cafeteria, fitness room with weights, yoga studio, meditation areas and mothers’ rooms. The building houses executive offices as well as employees in acquisitions, asset management, accounting and human resources.
HISTORY & GROWTH
Medical Properties Trust, established in 2003, is the second-largest nongovernmental owner of hospital beds in the world, with about 38,000 beds and assets totaling $14.7 billion.
Photos by Jon Anderson.
The auditorium has nature as a backdrop and natural lighting source.
About 60% of the company’s assets are acute-care hospitals, but MPT also has behavioral health facilities and post-acute facilities such as rehabilitation hospitals. There are roughly 200 in the United States and 200 in other countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Finland, Portugal and Colombia.
While MPT owns the hospitals and other health care facilities, it doesn’t operate them. It leases the facilities back to operators.
The company has had a compounded annual growth rate of 15% since the end of 2012, which coincides with its international expansion. Assets grew quickly to more than $20 billion in 2021, but acquisitions came to a standstill during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the company had to deal with the bankruptcy of its largest tenant, Steward Health Care, in 2024. It was the largest health care bankruptcy in U.S. history, according to the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
“It was a very painful bankruptcy,” Aldag said. “As the landlord, it hit us, too. We didn’t get our properties back to retenant them until September 2024.”
But all of those properties have new tenants in them now, he said. MPT last year did about $100 million in acquisitions and is growing again, he said.
The difficult circumstances did not impact construction of the new headquarters, Aldag said. But some delays in the availability of materials did cause construction to last about a year more than anticipated, he said.
NEED FOR SPACE
MPT finally got all Birmingham area employees into the building by March 1, the younger Aldag said. There is room to add more employees there if needed in the future, Aldag said.
Growth was the primary reason behind the new headquarters, he said. Since moving from the Colonnade to Liberty Park in 2004, MPT had simply outgrown the two floors it was leasing in the 1000 Building at the Urban Center, he said. “We were literally sitting on top of each other.”
MPT didn’t disclose how much the new building cost, but an early plan indicated a $150 million budget, making it the most expensive commercial project ever in Vestavia Hills, according to city officials.
The company plans to add walking trails on some of its undeveloped property and donate the land to the city as parkland if the city wants to accept it, Aldag said. There is a creek on the property that leads to the nearby Cahaba River.
“People is everybody’s most important asset, and it’s important that we provided a place that is healthy and that is as enjoyable as we possibly can for people to come to work,” Aldag said. “I tell everybody all the time you spend more awake hours at work than you do at home. It’s just a fact of life. We wanted to have a place where people are happy, and I think we accomplished that.”
