San Joaquin Community Hospital used a shell company to secretly buy up a half-city block in Downtown Bakersfield during the first six months of this year, documents at the Hall of Records reveal.
Part of purchase included the Wildcat adult video store that hospital officials shutdown at the end of the store's existing lease.
The land was purchased by the Itani Investment group, a company created by San Joaquin Hospital Vice President Sam Itani in January, documents filed with the Secretary of State show.
Hospital CEO Bob Beehler said the purpose of the sham company was twofold: The medical facility didn't want to be the direct owner of a porn shop and approaching the landowners under a different name might allow the hospital to leverage a better purchase price.
"Having a pornography store across the street from the hospital went against everything that we were trying to do," Beehler said. "We're a religious hospital and that's kind of the opposite."
The Wildcat continued to operate for six months under the lease that had to be honored by San Joaquin Hospital as the new property owner. That left the hospital with a decision.
"We looked at the amount of rent that we collected and it was exactly, to the dollar, the cost of a pediatrician in Haiti," Beehler said "So we donated all that money to our Adventist hospital to do some good work there."
San Joaquin also purchased two parking lots behind the Wildcat store and two lots to the north. That's half of a city block and prime location for future development.
"It does make sense there would be something over there because I like the idea of a medical corridor with medical development on both sides (of Chester Avenue)," Beehler said.
The hospital is considering a mixture of medical offices and parking, but no funding or plans had yet been drawn up, Beehler said.
