Mobile-based Zarzour Companies has announced plans for a new $17 million, 55,000-square-foot Class A medical office building in Saraland, a project that will rise adjacent to the site of a new Publix shopping center and near the Infirmary Diagnostic and Emergency Room Center. The announcement marks one of the largest single medical real estate investments in north Mobile County in recent years and adds another major commercial piece to a corridor that has been transforming rapidly.
The project site sits in north Mobile County near exit 13 off Interstate 65, close to the intersection of Shelton Beach Road and Highway 158. That interchange area has seen a wave of commercial growth in recent years, including the recent openings of a Holiday Inn Express & Suites and a Cracker Barrel restaurant, and city leaders have long pointed to the corridor as a magnet for further retail and service development. Alabama Orthopedic Clinic and Saraland Physical Therapy are set to anchor the new building, giving the project two established medical tenants from the day it opens.
Timeline, Site Details and Parking
Construction is expected to begin around the start of summer 2019, with a grand opening tentatively planned for late summer 2020. The property sits on roughly 3.49 acres and will include about 250 parking spaces, a figure consistent with modern medical office design, where exam scheduling concentrates patient traffic into predictable waves throughout the day. The Class A designation signals a building constructed to the highest tier of the commercial office classification system, typically meaning modern construction, high-quality finishes, and professional management, which matters to medical practices that need reliable infrastructure for imaging equipment, exam suites, and patient flow.
The location places the building within a short drive of a rapidly residential building boom that has pushed Saraland’s population steadily upward. The nearby Infirmary Diagnostic and Emergency Room Center gives area residents an urgent-care style entry point into the health system, and the new medical office building is expected to complement rather than duplicate those services by housing specialist practices and outpatient providers on the same campus.
Why Saraland
Matt Zarzour, CEO of Zarzour Companies, said Saraland’s growth made it a natural fit for expanded medical services.
“Saraland has a rapidly growing population. With that growth comes growing medical needs. When you couple that with a healthy housing market and a great school system, it makes it an ideal location for this project. We look forward to helping area medical practices expand their presence into Saraland,” Zarzour said.
Saraland has been among the fastest-growing cities in Mobile County over the past decade, driven by new subdivisions, an expanding tax base, and a school system that has become a significant draw for families relocating from other parts of the county. That growth pattern — families moving in, households forming, and an aging population choosing to stay near growing medical infrastructure — is precisely the demographic profile that supports outpatient medical office demand.
A Local Development Team
Zarzour said the development team intentionally built the project around local expertise. Daphne-based Fulcrum Construction Group will serve as general contractor, Fairhope-headquartered Walcott Adams Verneuille is the project architect, and SE Civil Engineering, also based in Fairhope, will handle civil engineering work. All three firms are Baldwin County-based, reflecting a regional pattern in which Mobile and Baldwin County firms routinely cross the bay to work on major commercial projects on both sides of Mobile Bay.
Walcott Adams Verneuille has a long history of institutional and commercial architecture in south Alabama, and Fulcrum Construction Group has built a portfolio of medical, office, and retail work across the Gulf Coast. Keeping design and construction talent regional, Zarzour said, keeps institutional knowledge close to the project and allows faster decision-making during the construction phase.
A Growing Commercial Node
The medical office building adds to a string of new commercial investment clustering around the Shelton Beach Road corridor and I-65 exit 13, an area that has become one of the fastest-growing commercial nodes in Mobile County as Saraland’s population and school enrollment have expanded. The combination of highway visibility, acreage available for larger format development, and proximity to a growing residential base has made the interchange attractive to national chains and local developers alike.
Local officials have pointed to that growth, paired with the city’s schools and housing market, as a draw for both retail and medical development. The arrival of a Publix-anchored shopping center adjacent to the medical office site is expected to reinforce daily traffic patterns in the corridor, giving patients a reason to combine medical visits with routine shopping trips and giving retailers confidence in the area’s long-term customer base.
For residents of Saraland, Satsuma, Creola, and surrounding communities in north Mobile County, the project means shorter drives for specialist appointments that previously required trips into midtown Mobile or west Mobile medical districts. Medical office space near home reduces travel time for elderly patients, families with young children, and residents who manage recurring appointments for orthopedic or physical therapy care.
What Comes Next
Companies interested in remaining office space in the new building are being directed to contact Zarzour Companies for leasing details. With construction slated to begin around the start of summer 2019 and a targeted late-summer 2020 opening, leasing activity is expected to continue through the construction period as additional practices evaluate the corridor’s growth trajectory.
Zarzour Companies has been active across the Gulf Coast in commercial real estate development, and the Saraland project represents one of its most visible investments in the medical office sector. If the project hits its timeline, area patients could be walking into the new building by late summer 2020, with Alabama Orthopedic Clinic and Saraland Physical Therapy among the first practices seeing patients inside.
Medical Growth Along the I-65 Corridor
The Saraland project fits into a broader pattern of medical expansion across Mobile County’s northern suburbs. For years, residents of Saraland, Satsuma, Creola and the unincorporated communities along U.S. 43 and Highway 158 have traveled into midtown Mobile or the west Mobile medical districts around Springhill and Providence hospitals for specialist care. Every new medical office that opens closer to home shortens those trips, and developers have taken notice of the demand.
The presence of the Infirmary Diagnostic and Emergency Room Center near the new building site is a significant part of the calculus. Freestanding emergency and diagnostic facilities tend to act as anchors for surrounding medical office development, because physicians prefer to practice near the facilities their patients use. A patient who arrives at a nearby emergency room and needs follow-up orthopedic care or physical therapy can now be referred to a practice less than a mile away, keeping care — and the associated spending — inside the Saraland community.
Alabama Orthopedic Clinic, one of the announced anchors, has served the Gulf Coast region for decades, and its decision to expand its footprint into Saraland signals confidence that enough patients live in the area to support a full-time satellite presence. Saraland Physical Therapy, the other anchor, rounds out an orthopedic care loop in which surgery, follow-up visits and rehabilitation all happen within the same corridor.
What Class A Space Means for Tenants
The Class A designation carries practical meaning for medical tenants beyond marketing value. Buildings in that category are typically constructed with higher floor loads to accommodate imaging equipment, larger mechanical and electrical capacity for specialized ventilation, generous ceiling heights for surgical lighting in minor procedure rooms, and finishes that meet the stricter hygiene standards of clinical environments. Ample parking — the planned 250 spaces on 3.49 acres — reflects the reality that medical offices generate concentrated peaks of visitor traffic in the morning and early afternoon.
For a growing practice, moving into new Class A space also solves the retrofit problem. Older office buildings converted to medical use often require expensive renovations to meet accessibility requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act, updated electrical codes and modern privacy standards for patient records. Building medical-spec space from the ground up avoids most of that cost, which is why developers such as Zarzour Companies market pre-designed medical buildings to practices weighing an expansion.
Infrastructure and Access
Exit 13 of Interstate 65 has become the primary commercial gateway for Saraland. The interchange connects directly to Shelton Beach Road, which runs through the heart of the city’s retail district, and to Highway 158, a growing east-west link that ties the corridor to industrial and residential areas farther west. Motorists exiting I-65 northbound or southbound reach the medical office site within minutes, an accessibility factor that developers weigh heavily when choosing locations for outpatient facilities that draw patients from a wide radius.
The surrounding street network has been a focus of city planning discussions as traffic volumes have grown with each new development. City officials have historically balanced commercial recruitment with the need for signal timing upgrades, turn lanes and drainage improvements along Shelton Beach Road. Continued investment in that infrastructure is expected to accompany the corridor’s build-out as projects like the Publix center and the medical office building come online.
The Bigger Picture for North Mobile County
Saraland’s growth is part of a larger northward shift in Mobile County’s population, with communities along the I-65 corridor — Saraland, Satsuma and Creola — capturing households that might once have settled closer to the city of Mobile. School enrollment figures in the Saraland city system have climbed steadily since the city split from the Mobile County Public School System, a milestone that gave local leaders direct control over school construction and quality. Strong schools feed housing demand, housing demand feeds retail recruitment, and retail success now feeds medical development, completing a cycle that city officials have worked years to establish.
The $17 million investment also broadens Saraland’s commercial tax base in a category — medical office — that tends to be stable even during retail downturns, since medical appointments are rarely deferred the way discretionary shopping is. For a city charting its long-term finances, that stability matters.
As the summer 2019 construction start approaches, area residents can expect site work, utility extensions and traffic management along the corridor. If the schedule holds, the grand opening in late summer 2020 will mark the completion of a project that began as a response to a simple observation from the developer: a growing city with growing medical needs needed a building to meet them.