Our History
Meridian-sponsored investment programs have invested in virtually every real estate asset class – including senior living and human healthcare, veterinary specialty hospitals and specialty care, multi-family, retail shopping centers, office buildings, and for-sale condominiums and townhomes.
Meridian has acquired or developed assets in many regions of the United States including Texas, Massachusetts, Arizona, Georgia, Missouri, Washington, California, Alabama, Virginia, Oklahoma, Illinois, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Working with our investment partners, we’ve invested in excess of $500 million of equity into our sponsored real estate ventures with a gross value in excess of $2 billion since Meridian opened its doors in 1994.
Meridian was formed in 1994 by Curt Boisfontaine based on fundamental investment concepts – source profitable, opportunistic investments, evaluate their risks, and in turn, provide proper financial structuring that delivers superior returns appropriately address risk.
Upon formation, Meridian’s initial financial backing was provided by a group of private investors, with the primary backing of John Albers, who at the time was the Chief Executive Officer of the Dr. Pepper Company. Over the years we have been fortunate to have and continue to have the opportunity to invest and transact business with Merrill Lynch, GE Capital, Sabra Healthcare REIT, LTC Properties (REIT), Welltower (REIT), HQ Capital, many regional and nations financial institutions and several high net worth individuals, family offices and private equity firms. We also successfully completed 17 Reg-D private placements during the 1996-2004 time frame, all of which have gone “full-cycle”. The majority of this historical investment activity was focused on traditional asset classes employing the same simple investment concept of opportunistic investing and risk mitigation.
Meridian’s entry into the seniors housing and healthcare space began in 2000 with a co-investment in the re-capitalization of Omega Healthcare Investors REIT which at the time owned approximately 250 skilled nursing facilities. The investment was led by a Dallas-based private equity firm and this investment was the catalyst for the first independent Meridian-sponsored investment in seniors housing as the Meridian-sponsored investment provided the equity for the ground-up development of three new skilled nursing development. Beginning with that entry into the seniors housing space, Meridian to date has developed 22 nursing homes, four standalone memory care communities, and six combination-assisted living/memory care communities.
In 2015, Meridian commenced efforts to establish an alternative investment platform to invest in the development/redevelopment/acquisition of veterinary specialty hospitals which were to be triple net leased to strong credit operators. Meridian applied similar real estate investment strategies around veterinary specialty and emergency hospitals making its first investment in a new hospital in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. Meridian has continued to expand its involvement in the veterinary specialty sector and in 2019, Meridian completed the construction of a 38,000 SF veterinary specialty and emergency care hospital in Dallas, Texas, and a 65,000 SF veterinary specialty and emergency care hospital in Chicago, Illinois. As of November 2020, Meridian owns 8 veterinary hospitals with a combined clinical space of 235,000 square feet.
Our business is relationship-driven and our investment model requires teamwork and accountability. Our overall objective is to create state-of-the-art living and care environments for both humans and companion pets that will deliver the highest quality of care and structure successful investments for our financial and operating partners.
A large majority of our investment programs have gone full cycle with positive financial outcomes for Meridian and our partners. Today we manage an investment portfolio with an aggregate value of approximately $250 million with numerous prospective deals in the pipeline. Through our operator relationships, we will continue to identify opportunities to not only invest in facilities that house successful veterinary specialty hospitals, but also facilitate an improvement strategy that increases hospital revenue, ensures a viable long-term lease with a credit tenant, and in turn, continues to provide consistent returns for the investors.