A team-up that can be a boon for Detroit

The team-up of Henry Ford Health, Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores and Michigan State University is a big win for Detroit.

The total investment of $2.5 billion is huge and plants a redevelopment in a neighborhood outside the downtown core, will improve medical care in a city that sorely needs it and represents a marked expansion of involvement in the Motor City by private equity billionaire Gores and the state’s largest university.

e partnership moves forward a longheld goal of Henry Ford Health — stretching back at least to its longtime CEO Gail Warden in the early 2000s — to extend its reach within the neighborhood of its agship hospital and bring vibrancy to its surroundings.

Gores has talked frequently since his purchase of the Pistons in 2011 of how he views the team as a “community asset” and a platform that his organization can use to work with local partners to extend the community involvement of the team far beyond Little Caesars Arena.

The Henry Ford project, especially Gores’ part of it, will add other community assets — residential units and public greenspace that will long benefit the neighborhood and those who live there. As the project develops, listening to the community on its needs will be key.

The importance of the role of Michigan State — shouldn’t be understated. It’s aca - demic partnership with Henry Ford will raise the reputation of the health system and help bring in research dollars that will pay dividends far into the future.

Putting together such a large and multilayered partnership in an industry as complex as health care is a huge achievement. Previous efforts to forge such a deal, such as a failed arrangement between Wayne State University and Henry Ford Health, have fallen apart over one sticking point or another.

It’s also a tribute to relationships. Pistons Vice Chairman Arn Tellem formed a fast and solid bond with Henry Ford Health’s former CEO Wright Lassiter III when both arrived in Detroit in the middle of the last decade. Current Henry Ford CEO Bob Riney, who has 45 years of experience with the health system in a multitude of roles, has been one of its public faces for years.

The level of trust that these kinds of relationships build can’t be duplicated with mere money.

Now, the challenge will be bringing the vision into reality. The details of development in Detroit aren’t always easy.

But what we’ve seen so far from this partnership, and the firepower of its major players all rowing in the same direction, gives us confidence that it will ultimately be a boon for the city.