Dentist builds fancy offices

Looking to escape boring boxes, Lane creates and rents out distinctive spaces

CLAYTON -- A gleaming French chateau is sprouting behind a drugstore, a Waffle House and a row of rusty warehouses near this Johnston County town.

Under its sloping roof and balustrade, a cigar lounge and walk-in humidor await paint.

From its dormers, you can see an unfinished footbridge spanning a courtyard pond that will feature waterfalls and be stocked with koi before the 27,000-square-foot building opens next month.

There are less lavish places to perform a root canal. None would suit Don Lane, chief executive of Dr. Lane & Associates Family Dentistry, a practice that bills itself as "the enemy of ouch."

"I just like building pretty buildings," Lane said. "I like architecture. And I loved playing Monopoly growing up."

Although most dentists rent or own a low-key office befitting the less-than-glamorous world of oral health, Lane has amassed an empire of opulent offices -- with Greek revival, neoclassical, Jeffersonian and French provincial themes -- for his practice.

He has designed and developed 11 of his 15 offices -- a portfolio totaling about 100,000 square feet -- in some of central North Carolina's fastest-growing towns. The building in Johnston County's Cleveland area, near N.C. 42 and Interstate 40, will be his biggest.

It wasn't always this way. In 1980, Lane rented his first office, a 900-square-foot box in a humdrum Fuquay-Varina office complex.

By 1988, he was tired of throwing money at a landlord. He decided to build equity in his practice by buying small commercial buildings to renovate.

But that wasn't enough. "I wasn't satisfied with the architecture, the lack of individuality," he said. "So I quit compromising."

In 1997, he began building his first monuments: A white, 8,100-square-foot building with an covered entrance and Jeffersonian dome on North Main Street in Fuquay-Varina, and a less ornate Greek revival office in Mount Olive, which was the template for offices in Lillington and several other towns.

More followed. A neoclassical office in Dunn evokes the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. A Greek revival office in Angier, Lane says, has the town's only elevator. Corinthian columns make the Wake Forest Road office in Raleigh look like the Supreme Court of dentistry.

Lane has also grown from owner-occupant to landlord. He focuses on building in towns where demand for medical services, and offices to support them, is growing. He builds more space than his practice needs and generates rental income by leasing the rest to other medical professionals.

In the Johnston office, Lane's practice will occupy 5,000 square feet. A chiropractor and an optometrist have preleased some of the excess. The top floor will be rented for banquets and meetings.

"It's like a bank would do: Build a large building, put their name on it and lease out the rest," said Michael Unthank, a dentist whose Lincoln, Neb., company designs dental offices around the globe.

The real estate strategy might not be unique. But flamboyant dental offices are, Unthank said. Most dentists want offices that look professional, but not over the top.

"If a building is too nice, people will say, 'Well, geez, if this building wasn't so nice, then maybe my health-care costs would be lower," said Murray Wolf, publisher of trade publication Healthcare Real Estate Insights.

Lane turns that theory upside down: "Build something nice," he says, "people will come to it."

He thinks the buildings are a big reason his practice sees 1,500 new patients each month.

Revenue is on pace to reach $20 million this year, up from $7.9 million in 2000, he said. And his staff of 180, including 30 doctors, lets him spend more time on his hobbies: smoking cigars, playing poker, practicing karate and, of course, designing and developing buildings.

These days, Lane only practices dentistry when he chooses, usually on patients he has known for years.

He is often found wearing frayed jeans and dirt-dusted work boots, rather than a lab coat and mask. He spends more time hounding contractors about deadlines and less time urging people to floss. He sees more drills for drywall than for teeth.

Lane is happy to have found a way to fuse dentistry with development.

He's planning a new office in Sanford, but still noodling with the design. He says he'll keep making buildings after he is finished with dentistry.

"In life, it's funny," he said as he watched a machine move asphalt. "You do something, and you think you're done. But that doesn't satisfy you, then you move on to the next thing."