UM-Sparrow asks Council not to study making old Eastern a historic district

THURSDAY, Aug. 22 — University of Michigan Health-Sparrow is fighting back against a proposal to the Lansing City Council for a study committee to determine if old Eastern High School should be declared a historic district.

Such a study would “ultimately obstruct the University of Michigan Health-Sparrow’s plans to address Lansing’s health care access crisis,” Margaret Dimond, regional president of UM-Health, emailed the Council today.

Dimond said old Eastern's location was the "linchpin" to the $800 million commitment toward improving access to world-class health care in our community" when it acquired Sparrow in 2022.

"A vote to consider a historic district designation puts at risk not only the proposed behavioral health facility, but all future efforts designed to serve the people of Lansing," she wrote.

The city’s Historic District Commission voted unanimously last week to seek the study. It has scheduled a special meeting at 5:30 p.m. tomorrow at the Neighborhood Empowerment Center, 600 W. Maple St., to decide on the language of a proposed resolution to submit to the Council.

In her email, Dimond erroneously referred to the commission, whose members are appointed by the mayor and the Council, as the “Lansing Historic Preservation Society.”

If the Council approves the resolution, the mayor and the Council would appoint the study committee, which can take up to a year to complete a study on whether the eastside landmark qualifies to be declared a historic district and report to the Council, which would have final say.

During that process, city officials have said, the University of Michigan could not tear down old Eastern to replace it with a $97.2 million, 120-bed psychiatric hospital, which UM-Sparrow has proposed. However, besides establishing the study committee, the Council may also need to approve a moratorium to keep U of M from proceeding.

The U of M Board of Regents and the state must sign off on the plan.

“I implore you to vote against a study, a moratorium or any other action that will delay or prevent the people of Lansing from receiving lifesaving care,” Dimond said.

Dimond’s letter indicated that UM-Sparrow has other long-term plans for its eastside campus that the fate of old Eastern may affect.

“We are also exploring opportunities to address other urgent needs through our extended campus, including better access to cancer care, enhancements in our birth center and NICU facilities, and more convenient surgical care,” she wrote, using the neonatal intensive care unit acronym. “We also see an opportunity to utilize this property to solve pressing challenges and overcrowding in our emergency department, which is designed to see 75 patients per day and is currently seeing as many as 200 patients per day.”

She said old Eastern, which has been closed for five years, “has significant safety and quality issues that preclude us from using it as a health care facility.”

She also addressed UM-Sparrow's opposition to  restoring the building through preservation. "As a non-profit health care organization we have a responsibility to focus our resources on our mission to improve community health, not complex historic renovations.”

Efforts were not immediately successful to reach John Foren, UM-Sparrow’s spokesperson, for comment on how UM-Sparrow determined the level of complexity of such renovations.

Dimond promised UM-Sparrow will “continue to work with the community to honor its legacy,” referring to old Eastern, “from a memorial garden to a remembrance wall.”

City Council member Ryan Kost, a leader of an effort to preserve old Eastern, called Dimond’s message “disingenuous at best.”

“I concur with Ms. Dimond's assessment that we require additional mental healthcare beds,” he said today.

“However, it is disingenuous at best to claim that they are collaborating with the community when they have not responded to me in weeks and have severed all communication with community organizations.”

Kost co-chairs the Committee to Preserve Historic Eastern and Promote Mental Health, comprising alumni, eastsiders and preservationists. He represents the 1st Ward, where UM-Sparrow Hospital's campus is located.

Dimond and other UM-Sparrow executives met last month with committee members. Dimond scheduled a tour for committee members but rejected its request to include a photographer and a preservation architect. Kost said the committee was disappointed but did not argue. 

After Kost posted on Facebook that the committee’s two requests were turned down, Dimond canceled the tour.

Meanwhile, UM-Sparrow granted a tour to the Lansing State Journal, albeit with a no-photography condition.

The story reported Foren as saying, incorrectly, that plans for the tour had “stalled” because the citizens’ committee was not living up to its agreement to limit its participation in the tour to the same committee members who had met with UM-Sparrow.

City Pulse then published a portion of the meeting transcript that documented that no such agreement existed and that the committee had requested preservationists to tour the building with UM-Sparrow officials, not committee members.

Reacting to the story, UM-Sparrow ended discussions, saying that committee members were being adversarial and not acting in “good faith.”