May 14, 2004

Copyright Grand Rapids Press May 14, 2004

With a touch of sadness, Sylvia Runyan will leave behind the colorful Jack-in-the-pulpits and day lilies she spent decades cultivating outside her Northeast Side home.

She and her husband, Norman, this week signed a deal to sell their Union Avenue NE home to make way for a $30 million medical office complex.

Their home is one of dozens that will be razed in a three-block area along Union, Dudley and Paris avenues NE.

The development will include two large medical office buildings, two commercial buildings and brownstone-style condominiums.
" I didn't want to sell, but you've got to do what you've got to do," Sylvia Runyan, 71, said.

The family was among the last holdouts in a three-block area slated to be bulldozed this summer.

But Sylvia Runyan suffered a stroke in January, then fire broke out in an empty house across the street. Both events, she said, made it clear it was time to move on.

" I sat yesterday when they paid us off, almost cried," she said. "My husband has lived in the neighborhood his whole life."

She holds no ill will toward the developers of the project, who had left her family alone since they rejected overtures to sell last year.

The redevelopment project is on track to get under way by July, said Brad Rosely, an agent with commercial real estate firm S.J. Wisinski, which assembled the six-acre site for the developers.

Dubbed Mid Towne Village, the location is a plum overlooking Int. 196 within a stone's throw of Spectrum Health's Butterworth campus along the city's "Medical Mile."

The site is bordered by Int. 196 to the north and Michigan Street to the south between Paris and Union avenues.

Retired Chicago businessman Edward Levitt and his son, Dave, are the primary developers.

No tenants have been signed, but interest has been strong, Rosely said.

The location is widely expected to be considered for Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine if it relocates to Grand Rapids.

Rosely said the location is "beyond ideal" for the med school because of the already approved campus-like atmosphere and its proximity to downtown hospitals.

But MSU hasn't nailed down funding, its facility needs or a construction time frame for its new med school.

" We are not going to just simply wait for two years and just hold it," Rosely said. "It is just too expensive. You can't hold property like that."

All of the buildings are expected to be LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified for energy efficiency and environmental friendliness.

The Runyan home was one of 42 properties that will be part of the project.

Levitt donated salvage rights for the old homes to Habitat for Humanity, which had built a home in the neighborhood in 2002 that is now slated for demolition.

As for the Runyans, they're looking for a new home. Rosely and Levitt have told them to take their time.

Sylvia Runyan said the family is scouting easily accessible home in the city that's not far from her doctors.