From left, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan; Gilbert Family Foundation co-founders Jennifer Gilbert and Dan Gilbert; Henry Ford Hospital CEO Dr. Steven Kalkanis, Henry Ford Health President and CEO Bob Riney; Henry Ford Health Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Adnan Munkarah; Care Delivery System Operations CEO Denise Brooks-Williams; Shirley Ryan AbilityLab CEO Dr. Pablo Celnik; and Detroit City Council President Mary Sheffield participate in a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday for the new Henry Ford Health hospital tower.
One hundred and twelve years after Henry Ford broke ground for a new hospital on the then outskirts of the city of Detroit, the region’s largest health system broke ground again for a new hospital tower.
Henry Ford Heath and community leaders celebrated the groundbreaking Thursday for the $2.2 billion tower set to open in the city in 2029.
Related: Henry Ford Health raises nearly two-thirds of $750M campaign
Among the guests and speakers were Henry Ford Health President and CEO Bob Riney; Dan and Jennifer Gilbert; Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan; Dr. Pablo Celnik, CEO of the Chicago-based Shirley Ryan AbilityLab; Wright Lassiter III, a former Henry Ford Health CEO and current CEO of Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health; Vice Chairman of the Detroit Pistons Arn Tellem; former Henry Ford Health CEO Gail Warden, among others.
“This is quite a moment,” Riney told the crowd of about 200 at the future site of the new tower on West Grand Boulevard. “This is setting the stage for Detroit to become 'the' medical, academic center of the country.”
The new 20-story patient tower will be among the most advanced in the country upon completion, featuring 432 patient rooms outfitted with voice activation software for patients to operate the lights and blinds and 75-inch touchscreen televisions to display patient data and communications with staff.
A rendering of the planned new Henry Ford Hospital patient tower on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit, near the system's current flagship hospital.
The 1.2 million-square-foot tower will hold five intensive care unit floors, 28 operating rooms, 18 interventional radiology labs and a 75,000-square-foot emergency room that is more than twice the size of the existing ER at its legacy hospital across the street.
Not a Modern Healthcare subscriber? Sign up today.
“Doubling the size of the emergency room? Do you know what that means for Detroiters?,” Duggan said in praise of the investment.
Dan and Jennifer Gilbert speak Thursday at a groundbreaking ceremony for Henry Ford Health's new $2.2 billion hospital tower.
The new hospital will be run from a new 46,000-square-foot Central Energy Hub that will provide heating and cooling to the facility using a water pump system, ridding most of the operations from using natural gas.
Three of the tower’s upper floors will be home to rehabilitation services from Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, thanks to a $130 million investment from The Gilbert Family Foundation. Dan Gilbert received care at Shirley Ryan in Chicago following a stroke in 2019.
“I had only one problem with Shirley Ryan,” Gilbert said. “They were in Chicago.”
The Gilberts’ foundation is also providing a $10 million grant to fund rehabilitation services at the new tower for locals who can’t afford treatment.
Bob Riney, CEO of Henry Ford Health, speaks at a Thursday groundbreaking ceremony for a new hospital tower in Detroit.
The new tower is part of an overall $3.3 billion redevelopment of Detroit’s New Center neighborhood.
Henry Ford Health and Michigan State University broke ground in June on a new 335,000-square-foot facility on the site next to Henry Ford Health’s One Ford Place headquarters in New Center. The building, scheduled to open in 2027, will be the first physical materialization of the 30-year partnership signed between Henry Ford Health and MSU in 2021.
Download Modern Healthcare’s app to stay informed when industry news breaks.
Tom Gores, owner of Platinum Equity and the Detroit Pistons, is set to to take over One Ford Place in New Center and create a new neighborhood with housing, a hotel, retail and walkable areas, as part of the project. That project, alongside the Henry Ford Health, MSU research center, is supported by a $231.7 million tax incentive package that was approved by Detroit City Council in February.
The total brownfield development is projected at $773 million.
Henry Ford Health has not, at least yet, sought public subsidies for its planned hospital tower.
The Henry Ford Health-MSU center will focus on cancer, neuroscience, immunology and hypertension research. The new center will serve as a home for the Nick Gilbert Neurofibromatosis Research Institute, where researchers from all over the country, funded by the Gilberts, can put their collective work to use. Nick Gilbert died in May last year of complications from the disease, which causes rapid tumor growth on the nerves of the body.
Dan Gilbert — who rolled up his jacket sleeve prior to speaking at the podium at the Thursday groundbreaking, revealing a tattooed portrait of his late son on his forearm — said the overall development will add to the city’s reputation.
“It’s another beautiful day for our city,” Gilbert said.
The groundbreaking comes only weeks before Henry Ford Health officially takes over eight Ascension hospitals in Southeast Michigan. Under the no-cash deal, the hospitals and an addiction treatment center will be rebranded under Henry Ford Health. The deal is scheduled to close Sept. 30.
The combined entity would employ 50,000 workers at more than 550 sites across the state, and effectively double the size of Detroit-based Henry Ford Health. Henry Ford Health is growing its acute care hospitals from five to 14, surpassing Corewell East's (formerly Beaumont) footprint in the region of eight hospitals. Henry Ford Health also operates a hospital outside the region, in Jackson.
This story first appeared in Crain's Detroit Business.
Send us a letter
Have an opinion about this story? Click here to submit a Letter to the Editor, and we may publish it in print.
