U of M-Sparrow offers a glimmer of hope for old Eastern High

University of Michigan Health–Sparrow is listening.

Its president, Margaret Dimond, met Monday with a group, including myself, seeking to save old Eastern High School. Two weeks ago, the health system declared that the landmark building on Pennsylvania Avenue had to be demolished to make room for a proposed psychiatric facility.

Monday, though, Dimond backed off.

After more than an hour of discussion, during which she had indicated there may be room for reconsideration, I asked her, “The last public statement was, basically, Eastern’s gone. Is there a change.”

“If Eastern were all gone,” Dimond replied, “we wouldn’t be listening.”

She went on: “I think there are ways we can preserve pieces. I don’t know what those pieces are yet, because we have to see not only where the psych hospital fits in, but what’s the 10-year plan for the campus.”

Certainly, her comment is far from a promise to save the landmark building. But its demolition is no longer a fait accompli, either. Maybe the psych hospital can fit in elsewhere on the Michigan Avenue campus.

A sign of a potential shift in U of Health-Sparrow’s thinking came when state Sen. Sarah Anthony, D-Lansing, asked if there was a “middle ground” while site plans were still being developed.

Yes, said Dimond.

Dimond also readily agreed to a suggestion by eastside leader Joan Nelson that a preservationist and health system officials tour old Eastern and its grounds together.

That is important because not every inch of old Eastern is historic and hence worth saving.

For example, Nancy Mahlow, president of the Eastside Neighborhood Organization, pointed out that the east and west wings are expendable. “What we want to save are the front of the building and the auditorium,” Mahlow said.

During the meeting in the physicians’ dining room, Dimond and Dr. John Baker, the system’s medical director for behavorial health, laid out the case for the new facility, which is planned to be five stories.

“Our community is in desperate need of local beds” adjacent to the hospital, said Dimond. She said U of M Health-Sparrow is licensed for 58 or 59 beds. She added that the situation worsened when McLaren Health decided to close its psych unit when it moved to its new facility, costing the community up to 40 beds.

Baker explained that half of the patients who need mental-health care also have other medical needs requiring treatment.

“It takes three to four days for patients to get a bed in any behavorial health facility these days,” Baker said. “The need is even more dire for adolescent patients. Wait times are longer. No exclusively adolescent beds are here at U of M Health-Sparrow Hospital, and every week we see adolescents who overdose, and they have even longer waits for available beds elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere” means Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor and beyond.

Kira Carter-Robertson, U of M-Sparrow/Lansing's chief operating officer, reviewed other considerations, such as proximity to public transportation, “extremely onerous and complex” health-care regulations that argue against rehabbing a 96-year-old building, and so on. “The Eastern campus location really checked all our boxes” for a new facility, she said.

Our group responded that it understood the seriousness of Greater Lansing’s mental-health-care shortcomings and backed U of M Health-Sparrow’s goal. As Council member Ryan Kost, who represents the east side, put it, “Everyone in this room has been touched by some kind of mental health crisis within their own family.”

However, Kost questioned why the facility, which is projected to occupy seven to nine acres, needed to replace Eastern.

“There’s 23 acres that Sparrow owns, according to the Ingham County Assessor’s Office,” he said. Much of that is surface parking “actually adjacent to the emergency room,” he added. Eastern, he pointed out, is across from a parking structure.  With Eastern’s east and west wings torn down and the abundance of surface parking, “that would satisfy the seven to nine acres.”

Our group included Mary Olds Toshach, president of Preservation Lansing, who called on U of M-Sparrow to consider incorporating old Eastern in some fashion.

A U of M graduate herself, she said her alma mater “has always been innovative” architecturally in “putting modern additions on historic buildings.”

Why couldn’t some mental-health services be provided there, even if it does not lend itself to a hospital? Why couldn’t it be used for health education purposes? Or offices?

My 2 cents were largely limited to two points.

One was to argue for saving Eastern’s auditorium. It is a one-of-a-kind space in our city, which failed to save any of the five downtown movie theaters it once boasted. There is no other available space like it in Lansing.

What to do with it? It might make an ideal home for the orphaned Lansing Symphony Orchestra, which is forced to perform at the Wharton Center in East Lansing. The Ovation, which the city is building downtown, will be too small. But Eastern’s wood-lined auditorium, with 1,660 seats, could be retrofitted into a first-class hall for the LSO and other uses, including large gatherings of U of M Health-Sparrow employees. What could be more fitting than the Jack Davis Symphony Hall, named for the late Eastern grad who gave so much support and leadership to the local arts?

My other point was that Lansing is a company town — and U of M Health-Sparrow, which purchased Sparrow in 2022, is not yet one of those companies. If it wants to alienate Lansing residents for generations to come, then it should demolish Eastern.

Reflecting the entire group’s desire to find a solution, Jim Lynch, president of the Eastern High School Alumni Association alluded to how much U of M Health-Sparrow’s decision will affect the area’s tens of thousands of graduates and their families when he said, “I can’t hold them back forever.”

If U of M Health-Sparrow wants their goodwill, then it should continue to listen and try its best to find a way to preserve Eastern High School in much more than a token way.