Let Me Introduce You To Medical Mile

I am in what is called the "galley modification" stage of the production of Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community. The story of Grand Rapids' Medical Mile and the reinvention of this American community takes place on Michigan Street NE.

So, in this excerpt from Last Chance Mile, please allow me to take you to the home of Medical Mile:

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Grand Rapids’ Medical Mile is a cluster of prosperity. It stretches from the Grand Valley State University Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences that includes an entrepreneurial incubator on the east to Meijer Heart Center, Lemmen-Holton Cancer Pavilion, Spectrum-Butterworth Hospital, Van Andel Research Institute and Michigan State University College of Human Medicine on the west.

It is the epicenter of this 21st century revolution in the way this community is thought of, and more importantly in the way this community thinks of itself. Yet, it is only part of Grand Rapids’ story of transformation.

None of this existed 15 years ago. It all began with a $1 billion endowment from Jay Van Andel, a man who was destined to suffer from Parkinson’s, one of the diseases being investigated at the research institute that bears his name.

Michigan Street NE doesn’t sleep anymore. The people and the traffic of Medical Mile keep it awake from College to Division avenues. A full mile that slumbers but never snores.  It is the insomniac of Grand Rapids.

Ambulances scream up and down Michigan Street’s spine at all hours, while Aero Med helicopters fly over its head, bringing patients, doctors and organs for transplant to Spectrum-Butterworth Hospital.

The flow of people running across Michigan Street’s shoulders never stops. Doctors, nurses, technicians; white, black, brown, red and yellow people all in scrubs, some flowered, some plain, some blue, arriving for work, leaving for home every eight, ten or 12 hours. They never stop crossing from the new multi-story parking garages that were built on the northern shoulders of the Mile to the huge, blue Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital building that was added on to the colossus of Grand Rapids health care, Spectrum-Butterworth hospital.

Parents are inside DeVos Children’s and Spectrum-Butterworth hospitals at all hours of the day and night praying that their children’s hearts will continue beating just as this heart of the Medical Mile keeps ticking away, a silent metronome that keeps Michigan Street NE from closing its eyes.

Doctors and nurses race across the spine of the Mile before the lights change. Some of them run into Meijer Heart Center. This is where old hearts are exchanged for new, where lives begin again, where families grieve, where families celebrate. It is the building of second chances. It is yet another reason that Michigan Street NE can’t sleep anymore. The Mile won’t let it even doze.

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Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community