Source: Kalamazoo Gazette 
By: Pat Shellenbarger
Gazette News Service
GRAND RAPIDS -- From the fifth floor of the Towers Medical Building on Michigan Street NE, Joe Hooker believes he can see the future.
To the east, he watches ironworkers assembling the skeleton of Spectrum Health's new Lemmen-Holton Cancer Pavilion, and to the west, the newly poured concrete for the city's largest parking garage, soon to be topped by Michigan State University's medical school and a medical office building.
Throughout the area, the amount of health-related construction under way is unprecedented: nearly $1 billion.
A year from now, the building where Hooker has his temporary office will come down, making way for another medical tower. Across Michigan Street NE, Spectrum soon will build the $250 million Helen DeVos Children's Hospital, and the Van Andel Institute will start construction for a $165 million addition, more than doubling its lab space.
A few blocks south, Saint Mary's Health Care is building its $60 million Hauenstein Center and planning a complete makeover of its neighborhood.
In Wyoming, Metro Health will open its $150 million hospital this fall, just across the South Beltline freeway from Saint Mary Health Care's new southwest campus and two miles down the road from Spectrum's new outpatient center.
Zeeland Community Hospital spent $37.3 million on its new facility, which opened last spring, and Holland Community Hospital is in the midst of a $45.7 million expansion.
All these construction jobs give the area's economy a badly needed infusion of money.
``It's great for the city, isn't it?'' said Hooker, development-services manager for the Christman Co., which is managing construction of the complex known as the Michigan Street Development.
But the construction boost is temporary. Backers say the medical professionals who will fill those new buildings hold a key to the area's economic future, potentially making Grand Rapids a life-sciences center, attracting research dollars and health-related businesses and making the city a medical destination for patients from outside the area.
Others are more cautious.
`Competition is fierce'
``It's easy to look at all this new construction and say, `Gee, there's our new economic base,''' said George Erickcek, an economist with the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. ``It's going to be hard for the community to reach that goal -- not impossible.
``Areas that have good health services will be more attractive. That's the good news,'' he said. But he added: ``It's unlikely most of this activity will bring new money into the area. That's the downside.''
One reason is that medical facilities don't create as many spinoff jobs as, say, an auto-parts plant, which relies on more suppliers and other businesses.
Another is that medical facilities, unlike a furniture factory, tend to serve their own communities, drawing little new money from outside the area. A third is that countless other cities all over the country are betting life sciences will save their economies.
Forty-one states targeted biotechnology for their economic futures, the Battelle Memorial Institute estimated in 2001.
``The competition is fierce,'' Erickcek said. ``Life science is on everybody's radar. The question is, will Grand Rapids rise to the top?''
David Van Andel, CEO of the Van Andel Institute, thinks so.
``You rise above that because you're better than the guy sitting next to you,'' he said. ``Some people will win; some people will lose. That's what competition is all about. We plan to be on the side of the winners.''
The Van Andel Institute is different from other life-sciences facilities in that it does not serve a local clientele but draws new money into the area in the form of research grants to find treatments for cancer, Parkinson's and other diseases. Discoveries by the institute's scientists could attract new businesses from pharmaceutical and medical-device companies, Van Andel said.
The 7-year-old institute has obtained 46 patents and soon will begin clinical trials for a new drug, which Van Andel declined to identify.
``Those ideas eventually make it into the commercial arena,'' Van Andel said. ``Our long-term hope is we can attract business into that. Maybe they'll be new startup companies. The real economic promise comes further down the road. I think over time it will create its own jobs -- good-paying jobs.''
©2007 Kalamazoo
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