GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - The Michigan State University Grand Rapids Biomedical Research Center is getting closer and closer to reality.
University and Grand Rapids dignitaries are in town Thursday morning to break ground on the facility. The facility will be built at the former site of the Grand Rapids Press building on Michigan Street at Monroe. The demolition of the Press building wrapped up in the last couple of weeks.
The facility is an addition to the MSU School of Human Medicine and another major facility for "Medical Mile." The building will open in 2017 and be six stories high, roughly 160,000 sq. ft. and cost $88 million. It is expected to house 260 members of MSU's College of Human Medicine Research, along with 34 investigators and their labs.
The facility, being built by Clark Construction and Rockford Construction, will look to add up to 400 jobs to the local economy, and have an economic impact of 28 Million dollars in wages and expenditures.
Patrick Anderson, CEO of Anderson Economic Group, commented at the groundbreaking, "this particular project is another addition to what's a growing up of life sciences here in West Michigan." This process of an expanding scientific region in Grand Rapids began for the most part with the 90 Million dollar Secchia Center, which opened in 2010 as part of MSU's College of Human Medicine.
