A team of five doctors in the Quebec City area is providing services not only with stethoscopes and tongue depressors but with real estate development: The MAclinique group is overseeing the completion of its third large medical clinic building in the past six years in Lévis, with two more in the works.
MAclinque’s $60 million, five-storey Lévis Health Complex is set to span around 90,000-square-feet on Wilfrid Carrier Blvd. near Lorenzo Auger St. when it opens, scheduled to happen in November, in the Quebec City suburban municipality of 150,000 residents.
The super clinic, as such health facilities are classified by the Quebec government, results from MAclinique’s partnership with the real estate arm of the FTQ Labour fund. Plans call for a lounge, auditorium, fitness room, conference room and other shared spaces, as well as 46 underground parking spots with charging stations. It will host 26 doctors, with room for another 15 more and contain health-related outlets, including a pharmacy, dental clinic, optometrist and physiotherapy clinic.
The MAclnique organization was launched by Dr. Chantal Guimont with three other family physicians, a plastic surgeon and a real estate developer, and the group completed its first super clinic in Quebec City at 725 Lebourgneuf in 2017.
The same group cut the ribbon in December 2020 on a $27 million four-storey, 145,000-square-foot super clinic at 484 Royaume Blvd. in the Chicoutimi section of Saguenay, Quebec, which also comes with health-related adjacent businesses in the city that is home to 161,000 residents. The group is following a similar template in the upcoming Lévis building.
“These buildings are not your typical office building environments. They’re really a sight to be seen,” MAclinique’s real estate and leasing manager Justin Levison told CoStar News. “The building in Lebourgneuf has a grand entrance and a monumental staircase to the second floor. It looks like a shopping centre when you walk in. We prioritize windows and a lot of natural light in order to create a happy environment.”
The clinics offer patients a chance to get free health care consultations, paid for by Quebec's $60 billion provincial health care budget, which forms the largest expense segment in the province’s $150 billion Quebec annual budget.
Quebec has 57 super clinics, which the government health department defines as, “a group of family doctors who work together and in close collaboration with other health professionals, such as nurses, to meet semi-urgent or simple urgent needs.” Super clinics offer health care from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week but not all are located in new buildings.
Quebec's free health care is controlled by the government’s RAMQ health insurance board, which classifies doctors into family medicine groups. MAclinique then organizes for those family medicine groups to become major tenants in their projects. MAclinique also finds an anchor tenant and other health-related businesses to fill out the properties. Quebec's health system operates unlike other provinces, so the same process would not necessarily work elsewhere, Gabriel Dutil, who operates the real estate arm of MAclinique, told CoStar News.
MAclinique is in the process of organizing its first facility in Montreal, which will incorporate some assisted care facilities under government contract. The upcoming project on Fleury Ave. near des Recollets in Montreal North is set to fill a space behind the Magnus Poirier funeral home on Pie IX Blvd. and measure about 135,000 square feet and have 195 rooms over six floors when completed. MAclinique also has a project in the works on Ste. Foy Road in Ste. Foy, another suburb of Quebec City.