Although common in industrial practice, central inventory repositories for distributed organizations are rare in health care. They can reduce inventory costs significantly; even transportation costs:
Corewell Health plans $80M service center at long-vacant GM site in Wyoming
By Mark Sanchez - February 27, 2024Corewell Health plans to transform a sprawling former General Motors manufacturing site into an $80 million service center that will support operations statewide.
The health system acquired the northern 40 acres of the vacant 75-acre site at 300 36th Street in Wyoming for $6.6 million in December, according to property records. The project is located on the south side of 36th Street at Buchanan Avenue and just east of U.S. 131.
The 295,515-square-foot service center would house supply chain offices, a courier fleet, document and mail services, and 36,000 square feet of shelled space for future use. Corewell Health will build a non-motorized trail along Buchanan Avenue and provide an easement to the city. WOOD-TV8 first reported the project on Friday.
“The proposed industrial development will increase the economic strength of Wyoming’s economy with new construction jobs for the estimated $80 million development as well as new employment in the facility once constructed,” City of Wyoming planning staff wrote in a memo to planning commissioners that recommended site plan approval.
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The property, known as Site 36, has been vacant since 2009 after GM ceased production at the plant, which dated back to 1936.
Corewell Health bought the former GM site from Oak Brook, Ill.-based Franklin Partners, which had acquired the site in 2022 from the City of Wyoming’s Brownfield Redevelopment Authority for $5.25 million. The city took ownership of the property in 2011 and demolished the production facility.
Franklin Partners co-founder and partner Don Shoemaker deferred comment to Corewell Health.
Sarai Vanderwood, Corewell Health’s vice president of supply chain operations, told city planning commissioners at the Feb. 20 meeting that the consolidated service center “is a strategic project that we’ve been working on for a really long time.”
“This consolidated service center, when it’s all finished as a state-of-the-art consolidated service center, will support the entire state of Michigan for Corewell Health,” Vanderwood said.
Corewell Health will employ about 240 people at the center across three shifts, including weekends, according to Nicole Hofert, the city’s director of community and economic development.
Wyoming’s master plan adopted 2021 envisioned the site and the surrounding neighborhood for mixed-use redevelopment, including office, commercial and industrial uses, Hofert said.
“This plan is keeping true with what the intention was,” she said.
The Wyoming Planning Commission voted unanimously Feb. 20 to approve a site plan for the development and recommended City Commission approval.
“We are very, very excited to have you guys here, and we’re looking forward to working with you not only today, but in the future,” Wyoming Planning Commission Chairperson David Micele said after last week’s site plan approval. “You made our day. You really made our day.”
The project is the latest major investment for Corewell Health.
As Crain’s Grand Rapids Business reported this month, the largest in-state health system in Michigan has been investing to build-out a broader outpatient care base in the Grand Rapids area, most recently proposing a $15.2 million facility for endoscopy procedures in Caledonia Township at 4910 60th Street SE.
Corewell Health also has invested $57 million to acquire more than a dozen properties in Grand Rapids’ Monroe North neighborhood, where the health system is developing a $110 million office campus known as Corewell Health Place.
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