Not long ago, dentists were about as welcome as a toothache at shopping centers.
Landlords preferred more conventional retailers in their malls, relegating dentists to out-of-the-way locations if they would lease space to them at all.
Now they are prominent tenants in many shopping centers as part of a growing trend of medical-retail or “medtail” businesses joining boutiques and restaurants at neighborhood malls.
Prime spots in malls “used to be reserved for ‘better’ tenants” than dentists, said Chris Aguon, vice president of real estate at PDS Health, which operates more than 300 dental offices in California including Alhambra Modern Dentistry at Alhambra Place.
The dentist shares the upscale Alhambra shopping center with Sephora and Sprouts Farmers Market, serving patients who might have had to trek to a medical office building in years past to get their teeth cleaned.
It’s a sign of how shopping centers have changed since pandemic restrictions caused many small businesses to close and led retail landlords to embrace a wide range of medical-related tenants including dentists to fill empty space and coax potential customers to other stores in their malls.
With dentists in demand, they can be more choosy about where they set up a practice. PDS Health likes local shopping centers that people who live nearby visit often, preferably with a big-box draw such as Target, Costco or Walmart.
“We also love neighborhood grocery stores,” Aguon said, because people buy food often and many of the shoppers are women.
“We found that women in households tend to make most of the healthcare decisions for the house,” he said. “If they notice that the dentist is conveniently located in that same center, they’ll tend to give us a try.”
Nevada-based PDS Health recruits young dentists out of dental schools and sets them up in storefront locations around the country. Patients are frequently walk-ins with an immediate issue like a toothache or neighbors who want a dentist closer to home, he said.