GRAND RAPIDS ? Veteran journalist Rod Kackley has published a new book that examines Grand Rapids’ Medical Mile and asks the question whether health care will help reinvent the American economy or will it take a return to manufacturing.
Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community, Kackley says, serves as a road map for those communities. It shows the lessons that have been learned and are still being learned in Grand Rapids, Michigan as the city transforms itself from a blue-collar, lunch bucket mentality into a scientific community that seeks to attract the best minds from around the world.
Grand Rapids’ Medical Mile is the epicenter of this 21st century revolution in the way Rust Belt community is thought of, and more importantly how this community thinks of itself.
The Medical Mile is a cluster of prosperity that is anchored by a world-renowned research institute, a major healthcare organization, a Big Ten medical school, a university Allied Health professions program, and an entrepreneurial incubator where new medical and life sciences businesses are being born.
None of this existed 15 years ago. It all began with a $1 billion gift from Jay Van Andel, a man who was destined to die from one of the diseases being investigated at the research institute that bears his family’s name.
We will also discover this story is far from over. The Medical Mile could still fail.
?The reinvention of Grand Rapids takes place on the Medical Mile,? Kackley said. ?It includes Art Prize and Rob Bliss?s Zombie Walk. Look at how Grand Rapids has been transformed since I moved here in 1990.?
Kackley said author Richard Florida in his book, ?The Rise of the Creative Class,? contends higher education and medical clusters don?t add much to the wealth of the community. So, Kackley said, the Medical Mile creates a cluster of prosperity, but gives the city less financial capital to create the next one.
?We have to keep reinventing ourselves,? Kackley said. ?The next one ought to be manufacturing. We need to build the next manufacturing campus.?
What would Grand Rapids manufacture? Medical devices, Kackley said. To learn more, you can buy Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community at all of your favorite online retailers, at Schuler Books & Music in downtown Grand Rapids and at Click on RodKackley.Com
