A steel beam was lifted at the Ottawa Avenue project, marking a topping-off ceremony for Corewell Health's new apartment project built to house incoming medical residents. The beam was raised as part of a celebration for the Karl and Patricia Betz Resident Physician Living Center, while a banner thanking the project's namesake donors was also raised during the event.
Corewell Health held the topping-off ceremony for the apartment project, according to Crain's Grand Rapids Business, whose report on the milestone describes the development as a 119-unit housing project. That figure differs from the count Corewell Health itself used when the project broke ground roughly a year earlier. In its October 2025 announcement, the health system described the development as a Corewell Health newsroom release called a “118-unit, mixed-use housing complex,” a number also used in a 2025 MLive report describing a “six-floor, 118-unit apartment building” and repeated again in a September 2026 MLive update on the project's construction progress. The discrepancy between 118 and 119 units remains unresolved across the available reporting.
A Years-Long Push in River North
The living center sits in Corewell Health's River North district, where the health system has spent roughly $63.9 million acquiring nearly 12 acres of property since 2019, not counting construction and renovation costs, per the September MLive report. Construction on the Betz center itself was already underway as of two months prior, when MLive reported building activity at the 648 Ottawa Ave. NW address.
The project's roots trace to a lead gift from Karl and Patricia Betz, according to Corewell Health's original announcement, and it was expected to open in June 2027 when the health system broke ground on the project on Oct. 21, 2025. Plans have also called for ground-floor retail space, though MLive reported at the time of groundbreaking that no tenant had yet been selected.
Addressing a Housing Squeeze for New Doctors
Corewell's senior vice president of facilities framed the project as a way to smooth the transition for doctors and their families moving to Grand Rapids for residencies and fellowships. “We're trying to reduce the friction of that experience,” the executive told MLive in the September report on the project.
That friction is tied to a broader squeeze in the local rental market, according to figures Corewell Health cited in its 2025 announcement. The company's release projected a gap of nearly 8,000 rental units in Grand Rapids by 2027, a 48.9 percent increase since 2020, and said area market-rate rentals were running at 97.1 percent occupancy — above the 94 to 96 percent range the release described as generally considered healthy. Those figures come from Corewell Health's own announcement rather than independently verified market data.
The topping-off ceremony, covered by Crain's Grand Rapids Business reporter Kate Carlson, represents the latest visible sign of progress on a project years in the making. The Karl and Patricia Betz Resident Physician Living Center is designed, per the September MLive report, to make it easier for medical residents and fellows to relocate to Grand Rapids as the city's rental market tightens.
