‘What’s Next for The Hill?’

The development of health care and life sciences along Grand Rapids’ Michigan Street hill holds economic promise for West Michigan, said speakers at a discussion called “What’s Next for The Hill” at the University of Michigan/Urban Land Institute’s Real Estate Forum in Grand Rapids Wednesday.

“We, I think, have an opportunity here to do something that you can’t do in Boston, you can’t do in Philadelphia; it’s not going to happen in L.A.,” Spectrum Health Hospitals President Matt VanVranken. “It’s really about creating a draw for this community that is palpable.”

Marsha Rappley, dean of Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine, said the establishment of the medical school’s headquarters, four-year program and research and development arm in Grand Rapids is an example of the public-private partnership that is the only way forward in a time of economic distress in Michigan. 

She said a telling moment occurred while she was touring Ferris State University’s Kendall College of Art & Design, incognito, with her college-shopping son: “This young, passionate artist was recruiting this group of students to Kendall, and he was telling us how the nightlife is so great in Grand Rapids…so he talks about the apartments, he talks about the bars and the restaurants, and then he turned to me and said, ‘And we’re going to have our own medical school, right here.’ 

“It was a turning point, really, in how I cam to understand, what is the value that we bring to this community. It goes well beyond the training of physicians. It goes well beyond the presence of a Big Ten university in downtown Grand Rapids. It means something to this young artist and his ability to recruit to his facility.”

Grand Valley State University President Thomas Haas said in the economic theory that jobs follow talent, “my job is to create human capital, to create talent.” He noted that 98 percent of GVSU graduates are either employed or in graduate school, and of those with jobs, 88 percent stayed in Michigan. 

“In the next 10 years, clearly Grand Valley State University will focus and invest further to be the premier educational provider in the health sciences,” Haas said. “I think there will be new programmatic initiatives as well.”

“Grand Valley was really built not even 50 years on public-private partnerships,” he added. “That will continue to be the fuel as Grand Valley positions itself to a distinctive future especially in the life sciences.”

He predicted a need to expand the West Michigan Science and Technology Initiative’s wet lab space in the Cook-DeVos Institute “beyond the Medical Mile.”

“We’ll be working with both Grand Valley and Michigan State to jointly recruit people to this community,” VanVranken said. “In the last five years, we recruited 2,000 new employees to our system.  You know what the spin-off means in terms of homeownership, the economic (effect). I would see the future having a similar impact as we bring in people, all three of us, into this community the economic impact is significant.”

He said Spectrum Health spent $206 million on local vendors in its 2008 fiscal year.

—Elizabeth Slowik

Van Andel Institute built upon a vision

The late Jay Van Andel had a new vision for Michigan Street hill, and with the help of what was then Butterworth Hospital, he was able to fulfill that vision.

Jay Van Andel’s vision was to build a medical research institute that would not be encumbered by the normal bureaucracy that was seen in university centers, Steve Heacock, chief administrative officer and general counsel for the institute, told an audience today at the University of Michigan & Urban Land Institute Real Estate Forum.  Jay Van Andel’s vision was for a scientific community that would encourage collaborative and novel approaches to medical research within its own labs and with other organizations in West Michigan and institutes throughout the world. His goal was to build an institution that would be a catalyst for the development of a life sciences environment, Heacock explained. 

“The Van Andel Institute as an entity probably more comfortably belongs in San Diego, or Seattle or Boston,” Heacock said. But that wasn’t what Jay wanted. He wanted to make it happen here and help create and be part of a high density life sciences cluster.”

Today on the Medical Mile there is much to compliment Van Andel’s original vision, Heacock noted: the Lemmon-Holton Cancer Center, the Fred and Lena Meijer Heart Center, Grand Rapids Community College’s Science Center, Grand Valley State University’s Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences, the recently dedicated Hauenstein Center, and the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and the Michigan Street Development that are all under way. 

“These really are exciting and dynamic times in West Michigan,” Heacock said.

Ground was broken on Phase I of the VAI in 1998 and the facility’s grand opening was held in 2000. The building is set into a steep hill, and its three-segmented convex glass roofs cascade down the east side of the building, evoking the rapids of the nearby Grand River.

The VAI broke ground in April 2007 on a $170 million Phase II expansion that will triple its laboratory space and allow for a broadened research focus that includes neurological disorders and other chronic illnesses. The eight-story, 240,000-square-foot addition is being built on to the institute’s existing facility on Bostwick Avenue. When that project is completed in late 2009, the institute will have 402,000 square feet of space.

 

The expansion will open the doors to 550 new positions. When the facility is fully built, staffed and operating at capacity, it will employ 800 researchers and administrative staff whose work will be supported by a $125 million annual budget. The institute is funded by a combination of its endowment, research grants and private philanthropy.

With more labs and with a larger research team, the VAI will advance new initiatives in basic and translational research, Heacock said. The institute will be able to move more aggressively into research related to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson disease, for instance, in addition to some other areas of cancer research.

Cancer killed about 560,000 men, women and children last year, so there’s more work to do, Heacock said.

“I think what were doing here in Grand Rapids will make a difference in people’s lives.”

—Anne Bond Emrich