By HFT Staff

On the very same block where Henry Ford Hospital first opened its doors nearly 110 years ago, Henry Ford Health team members, patients, neighbors and partners celebrated the official construction launch of its major Detroit campus expansion, known as Destination: Grand. The project will be Henry Ford Health’s most significant investment in the city to date. 

The $2.2 billion expansion plan is anchored by a new, state-of-the-art hospital facility that will span 1.2 million square feet on the south side of West Grand Boulevard, directly across the street from the legacy campus, which will remain in operation. The facility includes a 20-story patient tower, with three floors dedicated to providing intensive inpatient physical medicine and rehabilitation in partnership with top-ranked Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. The inclusion of Shirley Ryan AbilityLab was made possible through a nearly $130 million investment by the Gilbert Family Foundation, whose co-founder, Dan Gilbert, credits the organization for his recovery after a stroke in 2019. 

The expanded emergency department will more than double in size to 75,000 square feet – and will be equipped with 100 private, flexible treatment spaces. The high-tech touches in the 432 all-individual patient rooms will ensure the most comfortable, convenient experience and will complement the existing hospital facility and beds. The interactive patient rooms in the new tower are being designed to utilize touchscreen televisions and voice activation for both patients and care teams, and there will be dedicated space for visitors in each room. Each of the 28 new operating rooms will be capable of handling nearly every type of complex surgical case, from transplants to brain surgery. 

As part of the Destination: Grand plan, Henry Ford Health is also building a 185,000-square-foot shared services building, which will house the hospital’s kitchen, loading dock, sterile processing and more, a new 1,500-space parking structure, and a 46,000-square-foot Central Energy Hub, which will heat and cool the new facilities through a hot and chilled water pump system. That will eliminate the need for natural gas—which is a known contributor to pollution and health issues—and will contribute to the facility becoming one of the largest fully electric-capable hospitals in the country. 

All of these structures will be built within the same footprint as the new hospital facility and patient tower, just across the street from the existing hospital. 

The hospital campus expansion is the centerpiece of The Future of Health: Detroit vision, a sweeping community-driven plan with key partners Tom Gores and the Detroit Pistons and Michigan State University to transform the New Center neighborhood into a walkable, vibrant community. It includes the creation of a state-of-the-art medical research center through the Henry Ford Health + Michigan State University Health Sciences partnership, as well as mixed-use residential developments with market-rate and affordable housing, retail, green space and recreational components. 

The new hospital facility is expected to open its doors to patients in 2029.