Traverse City wellness hub faces hurdles amid mental health push

Traverse City has no shortage of support for wellness projects. It has a growing mental health center on the Munson Medical Center campus, a crisis welcoming site on Hall Street, and private proposals aimed at turning more of the city’s shoreline and hills into health-focused destinations. The harder part has been getting those ideas through development, zoning and neighborhood hurdles.

Grand Traverse County commissioners approved $5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds in June 2023 for the Grand Traverse Center for Mental Wellness, a partnership led by Munson Healthcare and Northern Lakes Community Mental Health Authority with other local partners. The center was planned in three phases, starting with access and crisis services under one roof, then adding nursing and psychiatric assessments, and later crisis residential beds. Munson later identified the site as 410 Brook Street on the Munson Medical Center campus, and the Grand Traverse Mental Health Crisis and Access Center opened to patients on January 6, 2025 with select services Sunday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The need was clear long before the doors opened. In 2021, more than 950 people were treated in Munson Medical Center’s emergency department for a suicidal-related diagnosis. Grand Traverse 911 logged more than 800 suicidal or mental-health-related calls that year, and the Grand Traverse County Sheriff took nearly 500 more. Northern Lakes had already opened a Crisis Welcoming Center at 105 Hall Street in 2022, starting with noon-to-midnight hours seven days a week and planning to grow toward 24/7 coverage.

County leaders had already made mental health a strategic priority in April 2022, alongside affordable housing and childcare. That same county review pointed to fragmented services and a lack of cohesion among departments, a sign that the challenge is not just clinical care but how local systems are organized and funded. The center now operating on Brook Street reflects progress, but it also shows how long it can take to move from broad consensus to a working facility.

The same pattern is showing up in other wellness projects. Paper Birch Properties was one of two applicants in the Traverse City Commission’s 2026 Bijou by the Bay request for proposals, pitching a community wellness center near West Grand Traverse Bay. Separately, Paper Birch’s Timberlee Hill proposal in Elmwood Township drew opposition from neighbors over light, noise and traffic, while Elmwood Township planner Sarah Clarren said the application remained incomplete because of unresolved zoning issues involving proposed single-family home lots.

The bigger picture is regional as well as local. The Global Wellness Institute says the wellness economy reached $6.8 trillion in 2024 and is projected to hit $9.8 trillion by 2029, with wellness real estate and mental wellness among the fastest-growing sectors. In Traverse City, the demand is obvious; the harder task is clearing the land-use, zoning and neighborhood obstacles that keep health-focused spaces from moving from concept to concrete.