Plans unveiled for major Henry Ford Hospital expansion in Detroit, 550 apartments
The Henry Ford Health system plans to build a major expansion to its Henry Ford Hospital campus in Detroit at about the same time as Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores undertakes two new nearby housing developments totaling at least 500 apartments.
The projects, forecast to total $2.5 billion in costs and also to include a new joint medical research center with Henry Ford Health and Michigan State University, were unveiled Wednesday.
Henry Ford Hospital's 1 million-square-foot expansion would put a new tower across from the existing hospital along West Grand Boulevard, on land occupied by an office building for the health insurance company the health system owns, Health Alliance Plan, that would be torn down.
The tower's design is not yet final, although it could rival in height the nearby Fisher Building, officials said, and feature all private patient rooms, an expanded emergency department, intensive care units and advanced operating suites and more.
The existing Henry Ford Hospital would remain in use and its shared patient rooms converted to private rooms. The existing hospital would connect to the tower via tunnels and skywalks. After the expansion, the total number of patient beds on the hospital campus would stay the same at 877.
Groundbreaking for the hospital expansion would happen in 2024, officials said, the same year that construction of the joint Henry Ford Health and MSU research center is to get underway.
In 2021, MSU and the six-hospital health system entered into a 30-year partnership agreement with plans to eventually build such a research center on the Henry Ford Hospital campus.
The Gores and Pistons organization's housing developments are separate plans with financing separate from the Henry Ford Hospital expansion, although officials said they do share the same vision for growing the neighborhood around Detroit's New Center area.
More:More details emerge for $1.5B District Detroit buildout and incentives
More:Some metro Detroit hospitals losing millions amid high workforce costs, lower patient volumes
The first of the two housing developments would fully convert Henry Ford Health's existing headquarters office building, 1 Ford Place, into new apartments. The second development would construct a new nearby residential building. Altogether, the two buildings — repurposed and the new — would total at least 500 new housing units.
Henry Ford Health has yet to decide where it would relocate it headquarters offices. However, hospital officials emphasized that their headquarters will stay in Detroit. The hospital system intends to transfer ownership of the 1 Ford Place building and won't own the housing redevelopment.
"This is a monumental moment for us," Henry Ford Health President and CEO Robert Riney said. "World-class care is now going to have a world-class campus, right here in the city of Detroit."
The six-hospital Henry Ford Health system has a major presence in metro Detroit and had the fourth-largest market share in Michigan as of 2021, based on patient discharges, behind Trinity Health, Ascension and Corewell Health, according to data from the Michigan Health and Hospital Association.
Henry Ford Health and the Pistons are already neighbors at a relatively new and nearby three-story building, 690 Amsterdam, that contains the Pistons Performance Center and the William Clay Ford Center for Athletic Medicine. (The building also houses a Planet Fitness and a Plum Market.)
Wednesday's announcement happened inside the Pistons Performance Center, which includes the NBA team's offices.
Groundbreaking for the new housing is expected to happen "in the next couple of years," Pistons Chief Operating Officer Richard Haddad said. Financing plans for the projects are not yet final, he said, and potentially could involve public development incentives such as a "Transformational Brownfield."
“We are still working through all the details," Haddad said. "We’re going to have more to share over the coming months as we flesh all the details out."
Henry Ford Hospital opened in 1915 and the original building on West Grand Boulevard received numerous expansions through the years.
The health system has been seriously considering a major expansion for the past seven or eight years, said Adnan Munkarah, the system's executive vice president and chief clinical officer. The expansion could take about three years to complete once construction beigns.
“We have facilities that are aging," Munkarah said. "We have an amazing medical team, we provide excellent care. But the future of health care cannot be delivered in some of the facilities that are 100-plus years old.”
Contact JC Reindl: 313-222-6631 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jcreindl.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Plans unveiled for big Henry Ford Hospital expansion, 550 apartments
