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McMaster Children’s Hospital building $100m treatment centre beside HGH (Hamilton Spectator, Mark McNeil, Mar 20, 2012)

Hamilton’s new $100 million Children’s Treatment Centre will be located near the General Hospital on Wellington Street North, in an area of the city that hospital administrators say is “one of Hamilton’s most vulnerable neighbourhoods.”

McMaster Children’s Hospital officials today made the surprise announcement that the five-storey, state-of-the-art building would not be built at the Chedoke site of Hamilton Health Sciences on the West Mountain, as originally planned.

Dr. Peter Fitzgerald, president of McMaster Children’s Hospital, said after further consideration hospital administrators realized they didn’t necessarily have to construct the facility where the services are currently being offered. They decided to consider a wider range of possibilities.

“We started being introspective,” he said. “We stepped back ... and wondered what is the best location for all of Hamilton and the region.”

He noted the lower city site is surrounded by neighbourhoods identified in The Spectator’s award-winning Code Red series as having high rates of poverty that went hand in hand with poor health.

Colleen Fotheringham, director Autism, Child and Youth Mental Health and Development Pediatrics and Rehabilitation, says she expects the new facility will handle 70,000 visits a year from more than 20,000 patients. She expects numbers will increase slightly because the new location is more accessible by public transportation than the Chedoke site.
Construction is to begin in 2014 with completion anticipated in 2016.

Last summer Laurel Broten, who was then Ontario’s minister of children and youth services, announced that Hamilton Health Sciences would receive full funding for the building that would replace four rundown Chedoke sites that house programs for young people.

The 170,000 square foot treatment centre – which will feature an outdoor track, a therapeutic playground, physiotherapy space and a motion lab – will be built on Wellington just north of Barton Street East on Hamilton Health Sciences owned property that is currently used for parking.

The facility will house outpatient services, and be the base for in-home and community services, for autism spectrum disorders, child and youth mental health, developmental pediatrics and rehabilitation programs, and prosthetics and orthotics.

“I think this is huge for the city,” said Fitzgerald. “This is a $100 million project. It will provide new facilities for a very needy group of patients and families that to date have not received not much investment from a facility point of view.

“This is spectacular for the city...this is great news for us I am sure other communities are quite jealous.”