What does the Mass.-based medical billing company's $168.5 million hometown investment mean for Maine?

Thu, 12/13/2012 - 9:00am

Ethan Andrews

The central atrium at athenahealth's offices in Belfast. The Watertown Mass.-based company opened shop the former MBNA building in 2008 with 12 employees. Today over 500 of the company's 2,300 workers are in Belfast. (Photo by Ethan Andrews)

WATERTOWN, Mass - Last week, athenahealth, a provider of web-based billing services for independent physicians' practices, made headlines after inking an agreement to buy the 29-acre Arsenal on the Charles office park complex from Harvard University for $168.5 million.

But what effect, if any, will the purchase have on the company's offices in Belfast?

Athenahealth has been headquartered at the Arsenal since 2005 and currently occupies 245,000 square feet of office space there, split between two buildings.

Speaking on Tuesday, Carolyn Reckman, athenahealth's director of environment, said athenahealth planned to stay in Watertown and buying the property would allow room for future expansion and amount to better investment in the long term than leasing.

"We took a look at our growth for this area over the next 10 years," she said. "It's not unlike buying a house. You're putting down roots."

The 15-year-old company has succeeded largely on the idea of replacing standard "legacy software" packages for medical billing that had to be constantly updated and replaced, with a web-based system that adapts to changes in insurance company policies and other minutia of medical reimbursement in real time.

Many companies have employed a similarly fluid strategy with real estate, specifically shying away from ownership to avoid being tied down, but Reckman said athenahealth has never looked at its offices that way.

"We see it very differently," she said. "We have a very strong theme of cultural connection to the space we occupy." The Arsenal was particularly appealing, she said, because it was built during the industrial revolution, when architecture was all about optimal efficiency in production.

"People did work flow studies [then] and we identify with that strongly ... that energy and focus on a new way of delivering services," she said.

The Watertown Arsenal, as it was originally known, was built in 1816 as a military storage depot and repurposed near the end of the 19th Century for manufacturing arms.

In 1995 it was converted to civilian use and became the subject of a major environmental remediation project and conversion to an office park, renamed Arsenal on the Charles. Harvard bought the property from a private developer for $100 million in 2001. There are 11 buildings in total, occupied over 20 tenants, with roughly 100,000 square feet of vacant space.

The sale is not expected to be completed until 2013 and Reckman said athenahealth would honor all existing leases. Some of the businesses there today, including a health club, arts center and restaurants are services that athenahealth employees use, she said.

She declined to place the Arsenal purchase in the context of other investments athenahealth has made either in real estate or acquisitions, but it is undoubtedly a big one — by comparison, the company paid $7.7 million — less than 5-percent of the Arsenal price tag — for the 400-acre Point Lookout complex in Northport in 2011.

Asked if the Arsenal purchase would affect operations in Belfast, Reckman said, "Absolutely not."

"This is entirely about our future," she said, "and we expect Belfast to be an integral part of that."

She cited athenahealth's rapid growth in Belfast since the company bought a portion of the former MBNA complex in 2008 and opened with 12 employees.

Today, over 500 of the company's 2,300 employees work out of Belfast. The company also has offices in Alpharetta, Georgia and Chennai, India.

In October, Reckman said, athenahealth opened the third of four buildings that — joined by a central atrium — comprise the Belfast offices. Work on the fourth is expected to begin early next year, she said.

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