Los Angeles firm buys Mueller medical office

A Los Angeles investor is making its first play in Austin’s growing medical office space. 

Stockdale Capital Partners acquired 1401 Philomena Street, a recently built development in the city’s Mueller master planned community. It is Stockdale’s first medical building acquisition in Austin.

At 129,300 square feet, the building is the first non-affiliated medical office built on spec in central Austin since 2013, according to a news release. Tenants can take anywhere from a 2,000-square-foot space to a 28,000-square-foot, full-floor spread. 

The property sits next to Dell Children’s Medical Center and is one of many medical developments to rise in the area northeast of downtown Austin. The University of Texas at Austin is expanding its own medical portfolio just on the other side of Interstate 35. 

Chinese developer Gemdale USA built the project in 2023. It bought the property in late 2020. Since then, Mueller has grown rapidly with a spate of new homes and offices popping up in the former-airport-turned-community.

1401 Philomena is Stockdale’s first medical office building in Austin, but not its first property in the capital city. Last year, Stockdale bought the shopping center Arboretum Crossing at 9333 Research Boulevard in north Austin. That property, just south of the Domain, covers 192,000 square feet of retail space. Indicted real estate investor Nate Paul used to own the property, but he filed for bankruptcy on it in 2021. 

Elsewhere in Texas, Stockdale bought the InterContinental Houston, a high-end hotel at 6750 Main Street. 

Office space in northeast Austin has one of the highest vacancy rates in the city, according to a recent report from Avison Young. Some 41 percent of the 3.6 million square feet of workspace sits empty in the submarket, due in part to a large amount of space up for sublet, according to the report.