Children’s Health Just Purchased 16.5 Acres in the Medical District

Children’s Health is growing its footprint–again. The country’s eighth-largest pediatric system confirmed the purchase of 16.5 acres north of the site where the new pediatric campus is under construction and said it would be used to facilitate the construction of the new Dallas campus.

The property, whose official address is 6612 Harry Hines Boulevard, is a rectangle bordered by Mockingbird Lane, Forest Park Road, Hawes Avenue, and Harry Hines. Currently, it is fenced off and consists mostly of parking lots, empty fields, and scraped former development sites. The land is separated from the new Children’s Health campus by the Center for BrainHealth, which sits on Mockingbird Lane across from the property. According to the special warranty deed, it includes four contiguous tracts of land.

When asked about the purchase, Children’s Health responded with the following statement: “We can confirm the recent property purchase at the corner of Mockingbird Lane and Harry Hines Boulevard. This acquisition supports our long-term growth strategy and our longstanding commitment to serving the region. The site is currently being used to facilitate the construction of the new Dallas pediatric campus.”

What will be done with the property after it is no longer needed to stage equipment or facilitate the construction of the pediatric campus remains unclear. At 16.5 acres, it is about half the size of the new pediatric campus property, just a few hundred yards south. However, Children’s hasn’t shared any long-term plans for the property, which was officially purchased in May from publicly traded Alexandria Real Estate Equities, a real estate investment trust based in California.

Here is where things get a bit more interesting. Alexandria is one of the largest real estate investment trusts in the world, with nearly 40 million rentable square feet and a market capitalization of $28.8 billion. It made its name by owning, developing, and operating biotech and life science developments in places like Boston and San Francisco but had recently developed a $200 million, 325,000-square-foot life sciences campus on 12 acres in The Woodlands outside of Houston.

In 2023, Alexandria asked the Dallas City Council to replat the Harry Hines property as a contiguous lot and on earnings calls, the CEO referenced a desire to bring more life science development to Texas. After sitting on the property for years, a development never materialized, and Alexandria sold the parcel to Children’s Health.

Alexandria’s stock hasn’t performed well in the past few years. Since its peak in January 2022, atat nearly $223 per share, it has fallen steadily and is now hovering around $70 per share. In the latest quarterly report, Alexandria posted a net loss of more than $11 million in Q1 of 2025 after a $167 million profit last year for the same period. Alexandria did not provide a comment when asked about the property’s sale.

For Children’s Health, the new campus presents a few issues that were easily solved by sky bridges at the current campus. Children’s Medical Center Dallas’ ambulatory care building, located across the Medical District Drive from the hospital and housing many of its outpatient clinics, is not moving with the rest of the hospital. It is also unclear what will happen to the Bright Building, another clinic space adjacent to the main hospital. Both of those facilities are connected to the current hospital via sky bridge, as many staff go back and forth between them. The new campus, although it will be connected via a sky bridge to UTSW’s Clements University Hospital, will be a more significant distance for those who need to travel back and forth between the ambulatory building, which Children’s says will remain in its current location.

When D CEO Healthcare asked Children’s Health about plans for the ambulatory care building and the Bright Building last year, the system responded with this statement: “Plans for the existing site are still being determined. More information will be available as this project progresses.”