Wayne State breaks ground on $68 million Medical Office Building in Midtown Detroit

DETROIT, MI - Construction equipment is not going to leave the Woodward Avenue corridor in Midtown any time soon, Wayne State University is seeing to that as it broke ground Monday on a $68 million development it's calling simply the Medical Office Building.

The university says that the five-story, 153,000-square-foot medical office and parking structure for the Wayne State University Physician Group will replace an existing facility at 3750 Woodward Ave., which has become outdated.

The facility will centralize WSUPGs services from other, nearby Detroit-based locations. WSU says the facility will accommodate more than 200,000 patient appointments each year for primary care.

It will be steps from a planned Martin Luther King, Jr. stop along the M-1 Rail line, the $140 million streetcar project that broke ground in July and has since been tearing up Woodward Avenue.

"This is a conflict for me, because my practice was in that building right there, 3750 (Woodward), so for me to advocate to tear that down you know something much better must be going up," said Valerie Parisi, chair of the WSUPG and dean of WSU's School of Medicine.

Parisi said the new facility will have "five floors of the finest physicians in the nation" when it comes online in early 2016. Development plans also call for retail frontage along Woodward Avenue.

David Muller is the automotive and business reporter for MLive Media Group in Detroit. Email him at dmuller@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter

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Wayne State breaks ground on $68 million Medical Office Building in Midtown Detroit