IHA moving forward with plans to construct new office building at Domino's Farms

IHA, which is already headquartered in Domino’s Farms Office Park, entered preliminary discussions with the township earlier this year to construct a 42,000-square-foot office building on an undeveloped portion of Domino’s Farms.

To accommodate IHA’s proposal, the Ann Arbor Township Board of Trustees approved an amendment to the Domino’s Farms Office Park Area Plan at its May 21 meeting to raise the allowable height of buildings by 5 feet, said Township Supervisor Mike Moran.

“In the office park, there’s a limit on the height of buildings, which is basically 35 feet,” he said. “(IHA’s) position was that modern medical buildings need slightly more height than that because of the amount of equipment needed.”

He added: “They wanted permission to design a building that was up to 40 feet tall.”

IHA, formed in 1994, has 32 offices with 156 physicians and 727 staff members serving more than 260,000 patients. Novi-based Catholic health care group Trinity Health’s St. Joseph Mercy Health System acquired IHA in 2010.

The group already occupies about 31,000 square feet in Domino’s Farms for its administrative offices. Domino’s Farms director John Petz said in an email the new building would be used as an out-patient clinical office and would not affect its current administrative space.

The next step for IHA is to submit a site plan to the township, which the group intends to do in the next couple months, said IHA Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Lowell Sprague.

Domino’s Farms Office Park is located on 270 acres between Plymouth Road and M-14 on the east side of US-23. Developed by Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, the office park has nearly 1 million square feet of office space with enough land to continue development on the property.