Maine Medical Center is buying the building that houses Pizza Villa, a neighborhood institution in Portland’s West End for more than 50 years, as part of its $512 million expansion. The hospital said it has no immediate plans to change the property and will work with longtime owners Tony and Phil Regios, who are planning to retire, to find a new operator.

Hospital officials said they entered into a purchase agreement with the Regios brothers to acquire the restaurant and its three-story building for an undisclosed sum. The closing is scheduled for March 2019.

“We’ve been a part of this community for a long time, and we’d like to thank all our customers and friends who have come through our doors over the years,” Tony Regios said in the prepared statement announcing the sale. “The medical center was the logical organization for us to sell to. They are very interested in seeing the business continue to operate and thrive.”

Although Maine Med has no immediate plans, the building’s upper floors could someday house medical offices or other uses.

The zoning governing the Maine Med expansion – an institutional overlay zone – prioritizes that the first floor of the Pizza Villa building house “community oriented/retail uses.”

“We went through a thoughtful and collaborative public process to develop the (institutional overlay zone) in partnership with the city of Portland. The result was a clear and predictable path forward for Maine Med, the neighborhood and the community,” said Jeff Sanders, Maine Med’s executive vice president and chief operating officer.

Maine Med is working on the first phase of its expansion, adding three floors to the visitor garage and two floors to the hospital’s East Tower, and will start work on the new employee parking garage this fall.

The expansion will add 128 single-occupancy patient rooms and 19 procedure rooms for surgery and other treatments. The total patient capacity at Maine Med – 637 beds – will not change, because rooms are being converted from double occupancy to single occupancy.

Joe Lawlor can be contacted at 791-6376 or at:

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