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Hospital Brings Area to Life
The Grand Rapids Press, Pat Shellenbarger, September 9, 2007 - Over the years, Kathleen
Cardenas turned down several offers for her home on Byron Center Avenue at 56th Street,
a raised ranch that 20 years ago cost her $68,000.
But when the offer reached a little more than $1 million, she sold it and moved out in
early August. A Walgreens drugstore soon will replace the house, just across the street
from a new CVS drugstore, which is next to a new strip mall of 28 stores and restaurants
and a stone's throw from the new Starbucks, all spurred by the Metro Health hospital due
to open Sept. 30 in what a few years ago was a cornfield.
The house where Cardenas raised her seven children held a lot of memories, but her pain
in leaving was more than offset by the windfall.
"I'm very happy," she said.
So are a lot of other property owners reaping the rewards of a building boom of stores,
restaurants and offices on the border of Wyoming and Byron Township, much of it in the
170-acre Metro Health Village and some near that site but inspired by the new hospital
and the opening of the M-6 freeway three years ago.
South Wyoming United Methodist Church turned down a $700,000 offer for its small
building on Byron Center Avenue but finally sold when CVS upped it to $1.9 million.
The new church, to be dedicated today less than a half mile west on 56th Street, "could
hold eight or nine of our old churches," said David Apol, whose wife, Marcia Elders, is
the pastor. "We have a paid-for building, thanks to CVS."
Nearby farmland that sold for $5,000 an acre a few years ago now is going for $300,000.
"The economic impact is very significant in terms of the number of people who are going
to want to live here, work here, play here," said Gary Granger, CEO of the Granger
Group, which entered a joint venture with Metro Health to develop a village of offices,
shops, restaurants, banks, hotels and a YMCA around the hospital.
The businesses in Metro Health Village and surrounding sites are expected to generate
between $5 million and $10 million a year in property taxes, mostly for Wyoming and
some for Byron Township, said Greg Markvluwer, Granger's senior vice president.
When the village of about 40 buildings is completed, possibly in the next five years, the
total value should approach "half a billion dollars," Granger estimated, and employ
3,000, maybe 4,000 people. That includes the equivalent of 2,063 full-time employees in
the hospital, an increase of 112 over the number at its current location on Boston Street
in southeast Grand Rapids.
While that will not replace all the manufacturing jobs lost in recent plan closings, it
helps, said Wyoming Mayor Carol Sheets. Some will be low-paying retail jobs, but
others will be skilled medical positions, a component of the much-touted new economy.
"It's an industry that isn't going to go away," Markvluwer said.
Years of work
The hospital opening is the culmination of a planning process that began a decade ago,
about the time Butterworth and Blodgett hospitals merged to form Spectrum Health.
Metro Health, then known as Metropolitan Hospital, was landlocked in its current
location. When neighbors objected to its planned expansion, the hospital began
looking elsewhere.
"It was at that point we recognized this hospital's not going to survive if we don't get
more room," Metro spokesman Jim Childress said. Over time, the hospital considered
18 sites from Lowell to Caledonia, he said, including Indian Trails Golf Course, owned
by the city of Grand Rapids.
About seven years ago, Sheets, then Wyoming's mayor pro tem, called Childress with a
suggestion. She was concerned Wyoming did not have a full-service medical facility and
that all hospitals in the Grand Rapids area were inside Grand Rapids. Until then, Metro
officials had not considered Wyoming.
"We wanted to get a piece of property that was large enough to allow us to build more
than just a hospital," Childress said.
The idea of a village surrounding the new hospital began with Metro Health, President
Mike Faas and evolved as the planning went forward.
Metro Health contracted with The Granger Group to help dispose of its current location,
which it sold to the adjacent Michigan Christian Home. After winning a waiver of a state
rule barring any hospital from moving more than two miles from its old location, Metro
and Granger entered into a partnership to develop the village on Byron Center Avenue
just north of where the M-6 (Paul Henry) freeway was to be built.
"Back then, it was basically a cornfield in the middle of nowhere," Granger said.
Stop and go
Brothers Rob and Fred Spica heard of Metro's plans and bought 17 acres across Byron
Center Avenue to develop a strip mall called Bayberry Market. They began building and
leasing sites, all the while watching the hospital's steel skeleton rising across the street.
"And then it stopped," Rob Spica said, "and we thought, oh, oh. We were a little
nervous."
In the summer of 2004, Metro halted construction while it tried to improve its financial
position in order to get a favorable interest rate on the sale of bonds,. Some doubted the
project ever would be finished. Granger never did.
"We never really worried about the hospital," he said. "It was just a matter of them
getting their ducks in line."
Nearly a year after construction stopped, Metro sold the bonds, and the work resumed.
And the Spica brothers breathed easier. Last week, Rob Spica sat in the Red Geranium
cafe, which opened recently, one of 28 new businesses in his Bayberry Market.
All but one of his storefronts is occupied. "Every day, we get a call from somebody
looking to put something in here," he said.
He is thinking of putting up a three-story office building on his remaining acreage and
may sell lots for a couple of fast food restaurants.
He is leasing space for $16.50 a square foot, while locations within the Metro Health
Village are in the $20 range. That is partly because all the buildings in Metro Health
Village must be LEED certified, meeting strict environmental and energy efficiency
standards.
'Sitting on a gold mine'
While the higher price in the village has made Bayberry Market more attractive for
some tenants, Granger said he is having no trouble leasing space inside the village.
"There's a big amount of anticipation," Granger said, particularly now that the hospital
is about to open. "People now begin to see the vision. It's just like developing a mall.
Our anchor is the hospital."
Four medical office buildings are finished, and another that will house a dental practice
is under construction. Workers last week were putting finishing touches on a village
green, which includes an amphitheater.
While declining to name future tenants, Granger said a bank, a couple of restaurants, a
delicatessen, a hotel and a higher education institution all have signed agreements to
locate in the village.
Negotiations also are under way with a second hotel and a supermarket, he said. Spartan
Stores spokeswoman Jean Norcross declined to say whether the company is thinking of
locating a D&W supermarket in the village but noted Spartan is a major donor to the
hospital and is the naming sponsor for the YMCA, which will begin construction next year.
"It's an excellent location," she said. "Supermarkets need a good location."
Granger is convinced Saint Mary's Health Care would not have opened its large
outpatient center just across the freeway earlier this year, and Spectrum would not
have built its West Pavilion Urgent Care Center a couple of miles west on Wilson
Avenue if not for Metro's development.
Cardenas said the area looks nothing like the "little bit of country in the city" it was
when she bought her home 20 years ago.
Her kids played in the middle of 56th Street, and Byron Center Avenue was a two-lane
road, not the four-lane boulevard of today.
She decided to sell after city planners convinced her "I was sitting on a gold mine,"
she said.
Mayor Sheets said she is happy Metro accepted her offer to build in Wyoming.
"I don't think there's anything else like it," she said. "I think the total result remains
to be seen."
