A conversation about Catalyst HRE (Healthcare Real Estate) and the vision behind Outlying Fields in Beulah.
“I’m fourth-generation Pensacola.”
Q: You’ve got deep roots in Pensacola. How far back does your family go here?
Chad Henderson:
“I’m fourth-generation Pensacola. I was actually born in Tallahassee because my parents lived there for a short stint, but I was raised completely in Pensacola next door to my grandparents. I graduated from Pine Forest High School in 1997.
I played football on scholarship the first couple years of college at Tennessee Martin and Georgia Southern before finishing at Florida State with a finance degree. Florida State was always the school I grew up wanting to go to.
After college, I lived in Tallahassee for six or seven years, then moved back to Pensacola in 2007 when my wife and I got married. She’s from Niceville, and we built a house out at Perdido Key.”
“I thought I was smarter than I really was.”
Q: You’ve talked openly about how the 2008 financial crisis changed your perspective. What did you learn from that period?
Henderson:
“I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit. I started my first business when I was sixteen years old. Right out of college, I got involved in real estate during the boom years, and honestly, back then you didn’t really have to be that great at real estate to make money. You just had to have some risk tolerance and be willing to invest.
I had some early wins and started telling myself how smart I was. I thought, ‘Look how good I am at this.’ Then everything came crashing down in 2007 and 2008.
Looking back, though, it was probably the most valuable education I could have gotten. I joke that I got an MBA or maybe even a PhD in what not to do. It completely changed how I thought about partnerships, lenders, risk, and long-term opportunity.”
“I didn’t want to just be a deal guy anymore.”
Q: Is that what pushed you toward healthcare real estate?
Henderson:
“During that time, I had done a small healthcare real estate project, and I realized healthcare was recession-resistant. Later we found out it was pandemic-resistant too.
That made me want to stop being just a ‘deal guy.’ I didn’t want to spend my career trying to just be in the right place at the right time or chasing random deals. I wanted to become a subject matter expert in one industry and actually bring value to it.
That’s where Catalyst came from. Around 2008 and 2009, we dove headfirst into healthcare real estate and began learning everything we could about healthcare delivery and how healthcare systems operate. I quickly realized healthcare real estate is completely different than other types of real estate, and that’s where the platform approach started coming together.”
“We started with friends and family who believed in us.”
Q: Did you ever imagine Catalyst would grow into what it is today?
Henderson:
“No, not at all. In the beginning, we were really funded by what I’d call country club equity — friends, family, and local investors who believed in me and believed in what we were trying to build.
From about 2010 to 2015, we built roughly $100 million worth of healthcare real estate through developments and acquisitions mostly around Northwest Florida. Then around 2015, I started getting exposure to institutional capital markets, and in 2017 we partnered with Bain Capital out of Boston.
That gave us the firepower to begin developing and acquiring healthcare real estate on a much larger scale. Later we brought in another large institutional partnership that gave us access to over $350 million in equity and more than a billion dollars in deployable capital.
Today Catalyst has offices in Pensacola, Dallas, Nashville, and Central Florida. We’ve completed projects across 24 states and have developed or acquired more than $2.5 billion in healthcare real estate.
But honestly, the thing I’m most proud of is our people. We’ve been able to recruit incredible talent to Pensacola and build a really strong team.”
“Anything we do outside of healthcare is focused on Pensacola.”
Q: Even with a national footprint, you’ve continued investing heavily in Pensacola. Why is that important to you?
Henderson:
“Because this is home. Pensacola is where my roots are, and anything we do outside of healthcare is really focused here locally.
One example is the East Garden District downtown. We bought the Rhodes Building back in 2017 with the idea of putting the Catalyst headquarters on the fourth floor, but that evolved into a larger vision for the surrounding area.
We acquired other buildings nearby, developed Union Public House, redeveloped older buildings, and now we’re building Hotel Tristan and the Tristan Residences. We’ve been very intentional in curating that district to create an experience-driven environment.
I don’t want it to just be office space where people show up from eight to five and leave. I also don’t want it to become Bourbon Street. The goal is creating an eighteen-hour environment where people want to spend time, gather, eat, shop, and experience the neighborhood.”
“I realized OLF-8 was one of the most important pieces of land in Northwest Florida.”
Q: What made you believe in the Outlying Fields project?
Henderson:
“A few years ago I was approached about the project and initially passed on it because I didn’t think the timing was right. But it made me start paying very close attention to the property.
I quickly realized this 540-acre site is one of the most important and unique pieces of land in Northwest Florida because of its proximity to Interstate 10, Navy Federal, and the growth happening in Northwest Escambia County.
What really made the project come together was our partnership with Jim Wilson & Associates out of Montgomery. They have tremendous experience in large-scale land development projects like EastChase and Redstone Arsenal.
That partnership allowed us to combine our local expertise, access to capital, and healthcare development background with their experience in large-scale master planning.”
“There were three stakeholders we had to serve.”
Q: You’ve talked a lot about wanting this project to serve more than just developers or investors. What do you mean by that?
Henderson:
“As we really began focusing on Outlying Fields, it became clear to us that there were three major stakeholders we had to serve if the project was going to be successful.
The first stakeholder was the economic development community and the need for job creation. In my opinion, there really is not another true Class-A site in this area focused on business, innovation, technology, and major job creation. That’s what this property can become.
The second stakeholder was the Beulah community itself. The people there had already spent years talking about this property and what they wanted it to become. Through all the charrettes and town halls, it became very clear they wanted a true town center — something walkable, something community-oriented, a place where people could spend time and create memories.
The third stakeholder was Escambia County itself. The county had invested significant taxpayer dollars into this property years ago, so there needed to be a return on investment for the community long term.
When we looked at all three of those stakeholders together, the goal became creating a project where everybody could win. That was always the mindset — one plus one equals three.”
“Beulah is in the path of growth.”
Q: Some people are excited about growth in Beulah, while others worry about traffic and overdevelopment. How do you respond to those concerns?
Henderson:
“I completely understand those concerns. What we can’t control is that Beulah is in the path of growth. That’s simply the reality of Northwest Florida right now.
Pensacola has physical barriers with water to the south and east, so the west and northwest side of the county are naturally where growth is going to happen. Once Navy Federal went there and larger subdivisions started being built, that growth pattern was set in motion.
The important thing now is making sure growth happens intelligently. We’ve spent enormous resources on traffic studies, environmental studies, surveys, and infrastructure planning. We’ve worked directly with FDOT and have been very proactive instead of reactive.
We’re trying to understand how to create proper traffic flow while also creating walkable areas and good placemaking. That means thinking ahead about road hierarchy, pedestrian movement, public transportation, and future interstate access instead of trying to fix those problems later.”
“This can become a major employment center.”
Q: What kind of job growth do you think Outlying Fields could eventually create?
Henderson:
“I think the opportunity for job creation is massive. One of the most important pieces of the project is the ETI District — the Employment, Technology, and Innovation District.
That district is focused on industries like aerospace, marine technology, cybersecurity, clean manufacturing, med-tech, and biopharmaceutical companies. We believe Northwest Florida is uniquely positioned for those types of industries because of what’s happening both east and west along the I-10 corridor.
The ETI District alone could create thousands and thousands of jobs over time, and then you add in healthcare, education, retail, hospitality, and all the other uses surrounding it.
If you ask me what this project could look like ten years from now, I think you’re potentially talking about eight to ten thousand jobs.”
“I love creating things that positively impact communities.”
Q: Beyond the business side of development, what personally motivates you to do this work?
Henderson:
“I love positively impacting the community around me. That’s really what drives me.
I’ve always had this mindset of thinking about what could be. Twenty-five years ago maybe that meant reimagining a single corner or one building. Today the opportunities are just larger because we have more resources and experience.
Outlying Fields is a legacy opportunity. It’s a chance to create something that people can point to years from now and say it helped shape Pensacola and Beulah in a positive way.
At the end of the day, I don’t care what business you’re in — everybody is in the people business. Developers have to work with bankers, investors, contractors, communities, and business owners. You have to know how to listen to people and communicate with people.
That’s what development really is. You’re creating a vision, bringing people together around it, and building something that hopefully serves the community long after you’re gone.”
