Anticipation is building as the finishing touches get put on plans for the $100 million multi-phase expansion to Boundary Trails Health Centre (BTHC).
A recent open house offered the public the first real chance to see how the new buildings will fit in on the campus, and what the renovations to the current hospital will look like.
“We also touched on the fact that the goal of this project is to build some spaces, the Community Service building specifically, is being built to draw services that don't have to be in the footprint of the hospital,” explained Kyle MacNair, Implementation Lead for Southern Health-Sante Sud. “Things like Public Health, the rehab, the administration services for the building, they're going to be pulled into the Community Services building so that we can renovate big portions of the hospital to increase our acute care activities. So, expand the emergency department, increase the size of the CancerCare unit, increase the size of the ambulatory care unit, increase the size of the staff lockers area to allow us to provide space for the new staff that will be needed for the expansion.”
MacNair added, as soon as the new construction elements are tendered out, planning will pivot to start designing the renovations within the hospital.
Plans for the new elements are in the final stages, and MacNair says they've been working with clinical staff to fine-tune the details.
"We've been working with the clinical staff - physicians, nurses, allied health professionals - to really nail down how the design of the space should work," he explained. "There's some mock-up sites that have been built in Portage, so we've been going out to those with the clinical staff to look at how these spaces are in 3-D [...] so they can get a real good feel of how the equipment will sit in a room and get a real good feel of how to work around it."
Overall, MacNair feels the feedback from staff and the reviews gleaned from the open house are positive.
With site preparations having already begun, he expects excitement to grow as things start to take shape and become more real.
Below is a gallery of photos that were presented during the open house.
All photos were prepared by Architecture 49 and ft3 Architecture Landscape and Interior Design.
- Written with files from Pam Fedack -
