New Ottawa Civic Hospital [930 Carling Ave + 520 Preston St] | U/C

[DubberDom]

Originally Posted by rocketphish

Some of these "options" are so laughable I don't know why they're even included; 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 in particular.

What about option 8? That's the silliest if you ask me.

I'm intrigued about the Booth complex location, I really like it, center of the city, along major highway, O-Train nearby....

[passwordisnt123]

Originally Posted by rocketphish

Some of these "options" are so laughable I don't know why they're even included; 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 in particular.

Agreed. Anything other than 1, 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12 would frankly be disaster and even several of those six would be problematic.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by rocketphish

Some of these "options" are so laughable I don't know why they're even included; 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 in particular.

Probably trying to make a point that there are limited options for a hospital close to the city centre and if people are really attached to the longitudinal dirt experiments at the firm the hospital will likely have to go to the burbs.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by DubberDom

What about option 8? That's the silliest if you ask me.

I'm intrigued about the Booth complex location, I really like it, center of the city, along major highway, O-Train nearby....

Why is option 8 silly?

[TransitZilla]

Originally Posted by rocketphish

Some of these "options" are so laughable I don't know why they're even included; 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 in particular.

Not that I think it's the best option, but isn't 6 on the LRT? The western edge of #6 is the proposed site of the Stage 2 maintenance facility. That should make a station feasible...

[1overcosc]

If any of the options from 2 to 7 are picked, I'll forever be angry at the federal government for stopping the Experimental Farm deal from going through.. they'll be responsible for denying the inner city a hospital.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by rocketphish

Some of these "options" are so laughable I don't know why they're even included; 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 in particular.

So they can say every option was considered and consulted.

Basically 3 options.
1. NCC land that is currently empty and generally used by the public.
2. Developed NCC land. This will mean NCC can't redevelop for other purposes and will need to find other land or buy land. Not sure how their accounting works if the Feds need to book this as a cost? If they give Tunney's Pasture for a hospital does federal budget get charged the $50 million or whatever the land is worth?
3. Experimental Farm. Essentially unusable by the public and no cost. What other city has empty farmland in practically the centre of the city? There is a reason the previous government chose this option.

I suspect they will go with option 2 which will have no community resistance and especially be happy to announce it is on the LRT line.

[acottawa]

I don't see Tunney's as very likely. They would have to build new office buildings elsewhere at considerable cost and access is an issue. Plus hardly anyone takes transit to the hospital.

[bartlebooth]

Originally Posted by acottawa

I don't see Tunney's as very likely. They would have to build new office buildings elsewhere at considerable cost and access is an issue. Plus hardly anyone takes transit to the hospital.

Do you have data to back this up? My commute to work using public transit takes me past two hospitals everyday (the Civic and the Royal Ottawa) and in my experience "hardly" is not what I see. Between patients, visitors and staff, you typically have quite a number of people that take transit to either hospital. Reliable transit to a hospital seems critical to me.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by acottawa

I don't see Tunney's as very likely. They would have to build new office buildings elsewhere at considerable cost

Why?

There is a lot of empty room at Tunney's.

and access is an issue. Plus hardly anyone takes transit to the hospital.

Cite?

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by bartlebooth

Reliable transit to a hospital seems critical to me.

And if you put a hospital on a major transit, guess what: more people will use transit to get to/from that hospital.

[passwordisnt123]

The real issue isn't whether or not people take transit to hospitals. My guess is plenty of people would take transit to hospitals if it was located directly on the Confederation Line.

Rather, the real problem with Tunney's Pasture (from the Ottawa Hospital's perspective) is that, due to budget crunches from the provincial government, they use exorbitant parking fees as a source of revenue to bolster their budget and fill gaps.

I think that's wrong and I don't think that's the way we should be organizing a healthcare system in this province, but like it or not, that's the way it is.

Unfortunately that factor alone will probably disqualify Tunney's Pasture from consideration even though I think it'd make a fine candidate. There's tons of wasted space there. You could easily fit a huge hospital and still have enough room left over for a high density government employment hub.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by bartlebooth

Do you have data to back this up? My commute to work using public transit takes me past two hospitals everyday (the Civic and the Royal Ottawa) and in my experience "hardly" is not what I see. Between patients, visitors and staff, you typically have quite a number of people that take transit to either hospital. Reliable transit to a hospital seems critical to me.

How many is quite a few? The Ottawa hospital has 1.1 million ambulatory care visits, 11k employees, 1100 beds (many of whom get visitors) and 9 parking lots. It has hard to find breakdowns among the campuses (and there is overlap with other institutions such as CHEO), but if any significant percentage of hospital visitors were coming by transit the limited number of buses would be overwhelmed and they are not. The 5 takes an huge detour to pull right up to the front door of the Montfort and employees still wait for a shuttle at the aviation museum to avoid taking transit.

However, it would be nice of the city collected and published more transit data so we know how many people were using a particular stop.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by passwordisnt123

The real issue isn't whether or not people take transit to hospitals. My guess is plenty of people would take transit to hospitals if it was located directly on the Confederation Line.

Rather, the real problem with Tunney's Pasture (from the Ottawa Hospital's perspective) is that, due to budget crunches from the provincial government, they use exorbitant parking fees as a source of revenue to bolster their budget and fill gaps.

I think that's wrong and I don't think that's the way we should be organizing a healthcare system in this province, but like it or not, that's the way it is.

Unfortunately that factor alone will probably disqualify Tunney's Pasture from consideration even though I think it'd make a fine candidate. There's tons of wasted space there. You could easily fit a huge hospital and still have enough room left over for a high density government employment hub.

This will be a big concern of the hospital, but the decision will be made by the Feds specifically Joly and I would assume Mckenna.

What will the hospital say we are against this location as it is too convenient to transit.

[zzptichka]

Does Hospital even want good transit options? They are raking in millions with their parking rates.

I'm all for Tunney's Pasture site. There are a couple of existing office buildings in the sea of parking, but you can easily build campus around them.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by zzptichka

Does Hospital even want good transit options? They are raking in millions with their parking rates.

I'm all for Tunney's Pasture site. There are a couple of existing office buildings in the sea of parking, but you can easily build campus around them.

How many hospitals are built in the middle of office parks? Hospitals tend to like big, interconnected buildings, the parking lots are pretty irregular. A lot of demolition and relocation would be necessary to build something that resembles a hospital.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by passwordisnt123

The real issue isn't whether or not people take transit to hospitals. My guess is plenty of people would take transit to hospitals if it was located directly on the Confederation Line.

Rather, the real problem with Tunney's Pasture (from the Ottawa Hospital's perspective) is that, due to budget crunches from the provincial government, they use exorbitant parking fees as a source of revenue to bolster their budget and fill gaps.

I don't think that is a very high consideration.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by zzptichka

Does Hospital even want good transit options? They are raking in millions with their parking rates.

I'm all for Tunney's Pasture site. There are a couple of existing office buildings in the sea of parking, but you can easily build campus around them.

IIRC some of the low-rises are coming up for a date with the wrecker anyway.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by acottawa

How many hospitals are built in the middle of office parks? Hospitals tend to like big, interconnected buildings, the parking lots are pretty irregular. A lot of demolition and relocation would be necessary to build something that resembles a hospital.

There are HUGE hospitals in the middles of downtown Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Quebec City, Halifax, Boston, Manhattan.

Apparently Ottawa is the only city in North America where it is impossible to build a hospital in the core, or in an area with existing buildings and land-uses.

Yet again, people are determined to find every excuse, no matter how flimsy (and boy, some of those excuses are flimsy), for why something can't be done, instead of finding the relatively easy path forward where it can. The challenges, such as they are, of building a new hospital at a site like Tunney's, or hell, even building around the existing Carling Avenue campus, are miniscule compared to other major urban hospital projects in other places.

[McKellarDweller]

Can anyone point me to more information about the "Booth St. Complex" - #12 on the map? Is that current building even close to being torn down for redevelopment?

The Booth St. complex or Tunney's Pasture are by far the best sites of those on the current list. Anyone thinking otherwise is overridden by some sort of personal agenda.