Hospitals in KW

[nms]

That's interesting given the huge fight in the 1990s to keep St. Mary's separate from K-W Hospital while rolling Freeport and K-W Hospital together. Does it sound like the two hospitals are hoping for a "University Health Network" scenario (eg three acute care hospital campuses plus two rehabilitation sites)

And of course, Cambridge Memorial seems like they aren't part of the conversation.

[bravado]

Cambridge did get quite a renovation for their Emergency department, so for once I don't have a big sense of grievance on this one for once.. St Mary's and Grand River do seem quite a bit out of their element now that KW specifically are so much bigger than when they were built.

[KevinL]

Another possible site that I've seen some discussion around is the Aud - if a new arena is built elsewhere first. That would have better road access than the R+T site and be more centrally located; but it would not be directly on the LRT.

[Rainrider22]

Any site in North Waterloo is a terrible idea. The largest population is in Kitchener, making the larger population go that distance in emergent situations will cause death for sure. Especially for cardiac related episodes. Also, this hospital will be built for the next 100 years. It has to be on transit.

[westwardloo]

Personally I think the Aud Land is the only logical centralized location for the hospital. It is relatively close to the LRT (Closer then St. Mary's), Ottawa is a major bus route so there is lots of transit accessible to that location. It is also right beside a major highway, which is important. The second option would be at the University of Waterloo in David Johnston research park across the street from the LRT. This only makes sense if the university has asperations of having a medical school. I would also like them to build it in the parking lot between Grand River and sun life, but it sounds like Grand River is going to continue to be in use so having the 2 hospitals besides each other doesn't make sense. Knowing how some of the planning happens in the region they will put it in the least accessible location possible out near the boardwalk or by the costco in waterloo.

[SF22]

I wonder how large the parcel of land needs to be, to accommodate the new facility? One spot that might work okay is along the railway tracks between Park and Joseph - a bunch of that property is already owned by the city, it would be a 450m walk from Central Station (if the main entrance was off Joseph), accessible by loads of bus routes from around the city, could benefit from being close to the School of Pharmacy, around the corner from the helipad at OSC (on the other side of the tracks), and it's halfway between GRH and St Marys. There are bike lanes that connect directly to this area, and a parking garage could be built nearby (closer to King?) but not directly on the lot to encourage transit usage.

[ijmorlan]

Just the parking lots north of the building at the Aud are almost as big as the entire site of the hospital on King St. It should be possible to build a new hospital on the site of those parking lots. Take over the skatepark and leash-free dog park as well (not that they’re not needed, just that it should be easy to find other locations for those particular uses). Build a parking structure on the parking lot south of the Aud to replace the lost Aud parking.

Still not great for transit, but way better than whatever halfway-to-Sudbury location they’ll probably actually pick.

And with both the Aud and the hospital, maybe we can get some sort of high capacity shuttle to the LRT line. Maybe even an LRT spur. Imagine if after games several LRVs started at the Aud and turned north and south when they got to the main line.

[Rainrider22]

In Mississauga they are building a new Trillium Hospital, They are building up on the same existing site which reduced the foot print required. We could do the same. Maybe were Ontario Seed is ?

https://trilliumhealthworks.ca/new-missi...pital.html

[danbrotherston]

They could also build it near Block line station or Fairway station if they were willing to acquire a property there.

[ac3r]

I'm being reeled in by the company I work for to do some pre-consulting on all this as I'm one of the few staff we have that is very familiar with the region in case we decide to attempt to do any work on this project in the future. Obviously we're years ahead of any concrete announcement on anything so this is all just speculation.

So far we're looking over the viable locations in the region that make the most sense for a very large metropolitan hospital. That includes looking into everything from physical space for a building, access to major arterial roads (when planning something like an acute hospital, you want to ensure vehicular traffic to/from it can flow like a river), highways, rapid/bus transit, the possibility of viable flight paths for helicopter access and all that other boring stuff. Based on our very early work so far, the location of what is currently The Aud makes lots of sense. There is already a lot of land there and neighbouring parcels could also be appropriated in due time for expansion. The distance to the LRT is a bit of a setback, though. I know everyone on this forum is /r/fuckcar mentality to the point it's like they forget we need them for 90% of things, but most people who work in health care tend to rely on vehicles (they may work out of town, can be on call 24/7, are not able to put their faith into an LRT that seems to constantly be fucking up and so on...you really can't have nurses be even 15 minutes late in a field like that). Having it as close as possible to the LRT is obviously going to be highly ideal. But access to arterial roads and highway transportation is also going to be useful. A dedicated place for helicopter transport would also be important, though it's not common hospitals even have helipads on them these days.

Looking south of the existing LRT terminus at Fairway Station is also another potential option, assuming the LRT actually gets expanded to Cambridge anytime soon. I'm not holding my breath on that, though. Nonetheless there is a lot of land available in the City of Cambridge, but considering this is primarily going to be a collaboration between Grand River Hospital and St. Mary's Hospital, it is more likely to stay within the Kitchener and Waterloo borders (but that's entirely up to the foundations that manage those two hospitals). As someone mentioned as well, Cambridge Memorial recently had a large emergency expansion and are slowly modernizing the rest of the building, so I can't see Cambridge being chosen for a new hospital for a couple more decades. They primarily serve as the acute care facility for that city, whereas the rest of the hospitals tend to be a mixture of the two.

Now as a team of architects and urban planners, we're trying to look at ways where we could work within the existing urban core (downtown, uptown or at least directly near the LRT line). Obviously hospitals don't need a large footprint anymore and you can just build up. That is, personally, my ideal option but it's not really up to us - but here's hoping. Like honestly you could have a 70 floor skyscraper hospital if you really wanted, so long as you had a real smart elevator management system in place. And, well, if evacuating a building with thousands of people in the event of a massive catastrophe like a fire was realistically easy...it is not, haha...so there are realistic limits with how dense you can go.

If I could just magically wave a wand and take over property, I'd say simply acquire all the property that exists across from the current hospital between Pine Street and Andrew Street up to the cemetery. Apart from the Kings Tower apartment building, there is almost nothing there but derelict parking lots and more derelict parking lots. CKCO is moving (has moved?), the guy who owns Central wants to sell it - blaming the LRT for lower revenue. There would be enough space there to build a massive new hospital with direct connections (tunnels and bridges) that can connect it to the existing GRH facility. Since we've already got the regional cancer centre there, it would be totally easy to transform the rest of the existing building to handle things like oncology, neurology, special testing, hemodialysis and medium term stays for things like psychiatry and post-surgery recuperation. You've got the LRT, multiple bus routes, the new train station 1 stop away, meaning the transit is there. All of that is very suitable since you have people, particularly students, who commute to the hospital from across the city and even out of region...a lot of McMaster students doing residencies here, for example. The only real issue is the strain that would put on infrastructure, particularly the arterial roads and LRT system. You obviously don't want traffic issues and people being late for work because our toy train can't handle a bit of freezing rain.

Ultimately it'll all come down to money more than anything, so we'll just have to wait and see. It'll be years before anything concrete is announced and even more before you see a bunch of dorks in suits holding shovels upside down doing the so called groundbreaking. It'll be an interesting process to watch, however.

[bravado]

Are we all agreed on a random field outside of New Hamburg, then? This process will certainly be fascinating and doesn't really happen very often at all.

[panamaniac]

I thought I saw something about "needing" something like 50 acres for a new hospital site (or was it 70?).  Or am I wrong about that?   Such a large site woud imply a suburban location.

[ijmorlan]

I thought I saw something about "needing" something like 50 acres for a new hospital site (or was it 70?).  Or am I wrong about that?   Such a large site woud imply a suburban location.

I think that’s been mentioned here before. Such a large site in the requirements would imply that someone has already decided that it needs to be out in a field north of St. Jacobs and figured that the best way to ensure that would happen would be to put such a ridiculous property provision in the requirements. I don’t know much about building or running hospitals I do know enough to know that they do not need 50 acres (just look at every existing hospital in the City, and combine with the fact that health care shouldn’t be centralized into a huge megafacility, both for reasons of access and disaster resiliency).

[ijmorlan]

Ultimately it'll all come down to money more than anything, so we'll just have to wait and see. It'll be years before anything concrete is announced and even more before you see a bunch of dorks in suits holding shovels upside down doing the so called groundbreaking. It'll be an interesting process to watch, however.

Thanks for the information. I’m interested that your blue-sky preference would be essentially to expand GRH. Sounds good to me. Unfortunately I suspect that politically they have to build a “new” hospital rather than “merely” expanding an existing one.

Hospitals are one thing I agree need both good transit and good vehicle access. The Aud is amazing for vehicle access and OK for transit, whereas GRH is great for transit and pretty good for vehicles.

[nms]

How about they start at the Kitchener Transit downtown terminal and slowly build north, absorbing 44 Gaukel, the King Centre and then the empty parking lot at Water/Joseph/Francis/Charles. Let it expand until the train tracks and ultimately connect to the Pharmacy school. Need to get from one end of the campus to the other (southbound only)? Take the LRT! (I kid...but you never know)