Gallagher Evelius & Jones LLP has provided strategic legal counsel to Baltimore’s Mercy Medical Center for more than two decades – a time when Mercy experienced unprecedented growth, establishing itself as one of the premier providers of state-of-the-art women’s health care services in the nation.

As a landlocked, urban medical center, however, Mercy found itself facing the inevitable: there was simply no place to expand, despite rapidly rising demand for services. Mercy turned its attention to a property just south of its main building which was physically ideal, but presented major construction and ownership problems.

Gallagher Evelius & Jones LLP worked with the client to acquire the site, owned primarily by a bank. Complicating matters, however, was the property’s extremely high valuation. In addition, a small corner of the site was owned not by the bank, but by a group of attorneys who resisted the acquisition. The firm successfully negotiated with both owners, ultimately determining it would be to Mercy’s advantage to structure a long-term ground lease instead of an outright purchase. This led to a complicated financing arrangement, and an agreement for Mercy to close an existing alleyway and upgrade the streetscape so that was consistent with the City’s urban renewal plan.

Because the proposed building would house doctor’s offices, a surgery center, and radiation and oncology facilities, the firm also had to contend with a wide range of regulatory processes. The firm's health care attorneys obtained State regulatory approval for each component of the new medical center.

Gallagher Evelius & Jones LLP methodically worked through each of these issues and, in the fall of 2002, construction began. A year later, the six-floor, 118,000-square-foot Weinberg Center for Women’s Health and Medicine opened for business, on time and under budget.