Henry Ford Health held a topping-out ceremony on Thursday, May 14, for its new $2.2 billion Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit’s New Center area that some say will eventually exceed in height the nearby Fisher Building, if one counts the hospital tower’s future helipad and antennas.
The new 1.2-million-square-foot hospital is directly across from the existing 102-year-old Henry Ford Hospital on West Grand Boulevard. It has been under construction since September 2024 and expected to be done by late 2029.
The hospital features a giant 20-story patient tower that is to measure just over 376 feet in height when finished.
On Thursday, a crowd of several hundred upbeat employees and guests of the health system watched from the roof of a nearby parking garage as a construction crane maneuvered into place a 1,400-pound steel beam to the top of the tower. The beam itself was placed about 332 feet above the ground.
“The final beam we have hoisted into the sky is a symbol of progress,” Henry Ford Health CEO Bob Riney said. “And it’s a symbol of hope and a symbol of commitment to the city that we love, and the very street that we’ve called home for more than a century.”
The tower’s only rival in the New Center skyline is the iconic Fisher Building, a historic 29-story Art Deco masterpiece that opened in 1928. According to the Detroit Historical Society as well as Free Press archives, the Fisher Building rises to just over 440 feet in height.
Speaking with reporters after the ceremony, Riney said the new hospital tower may well surpass the Fisher Building in height once it is completely done — depending on what gets measured.
“So that’s going to probably be one of those debates that people will have for awhile,” Riney said. “What I’ve been told is once our helicopter pads and our antennas are up, it will be taller than the Fisher Building. But we’re happy to have that competition.”
The new Henry Ford Hospital also will have a low-rise building section that will contain a new emergency department that would be double the size of the existing one.
The tower itself will have 432 private patient rooms, and the health system plans to convert the 449 patient rooms that will remain in the existing hospital to all-private rooms as well, meaning no more shared doubles.
“This $2.2 billion investment is transformational,” Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield said during the ceremony, “not only for Henry Ford Health, but for the entire New Center community and for the city as a whole.”
“This investment means jobs — good-paying jobs — opportunity, world-class health care and continued growth for our city,” she added. “And most importantly, it means better health care and healthier outcomes for Detroit residents.”
The new hospital is the centerpiece of a $3 billion megadevelopment in Detroit’s New Center area, dubbed the Future of Health, that Detroit City Council approved in 2024.
The other components include an eight-story research center that is a joint project between Henry Ford Health and Michigan State University, as well as 662 new mixed-income apartments to be built by the Pistons organization.
Construction of the MSU-Henry Ford research center, 6175 Third St., is on pace and expected to be done next year.
Riney said the Pistons organization is still committed to build the development’s housing components, and a groundbreaking for the first housing development could happen late this year or next year.
As for the existing Henry Ford Hospital, Riney said they are still considering potential uses for the building when the new hospital opens. One possible use would be housing for medical students, he said.
The top three floors of the new hospital’s 20-story tower will house a 72-bed intensive physical medicine and rehabilitation clinic in partnership with the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab.
Speakers during Thursday’s ceremony offered several rounds of thanks for Dan Gilbert and the Gilbert Family Foundation for making the AbilityLab’s inclusion in the project possible. The AbilityLab’s Chicago location is where Dan Gilbert underwent treatment following his 2019 stroke, and the Gilbert Family Foundation went on to make a nearly $130 million investment for the organization.
Contact JC Reindl: 313-378-5460 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on X @jcreindl
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: New Henry Ford Hospital tower in Detroit reaches final height
Reporting by JC Reindl, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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