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

[eltodesukane]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

Downtown Markham is actually shaping up to be pretty great:

(Metrolinx/York Region)

A bit like the CF Shops at Don Mills in Toronto.
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.7341...2!8i6656?hl=en
https://www.google.com/maps/place/CF...9.344201?hl=en

[rocketphish]

Here's what matters most for the new Civic Hospital site

James McCracken
Published on: September 16, 2016 | Last Updated: September 16, 2016 8:00 PM EDT

Over the next several weeks, the National Capital Commission will be reaching out to the public for feedback on 12 potential sites for a new Civic campus. It is an opportunity to listen to our community. We wholeheartedly support the NCC’s process and encourage all residents of Ottawa and eastern Ontario to take part in the online consultation process and visit the NCC’s open house on Sept. 22.

By late November, the NCC’s board will receive a report on the 12 parcels of land based on criteria released by the NCC and informed by the public consultations. As those consultations get underway, it will be important to consider two questions about a new hospital: first, how quickly can trauma and critically ill patients reach the hospital, and second, how good will the care be once they get there?

To get patients with urgent needs to hospital quickly, location and access matter most. Building the region’s only trauma hospital outside the city’s central core would mean extra travel time for many residents, wasting precious minutes that trauma and urgent-care patients don’t have to spare. In the past three years, a third of the visits to the Civic campus came from Ottawa’s central core. This is important information.

To provide the best care to our patients, space matters. If hospital designers had their choice, they would build outwards, not upwards. Yes, patient rooms can be in a tower, but critical services such as the emergency department and diagnostic imaging must be next to each other because minutes matter. Having those critical areas side by side takes horizontal space and increases the building’s footprint.

That is one major reason why we are proposing 50 to 60 acres. Plus, the higher you build the hospital, the higher the construction and long-term maintenance costs will be. In some cities, new hospitals are built upwards on smaller parcels of land because they have no choice. Few cities have Ottawa’s land options.

We should also address the asphalt elephant in the room: Yes, the new hospital needs a parking solution. We need about 3,400 parking spots to accommodate patients, visitors and staff so they are not forced to park in surrounding neighbourhoods or circle endlessly searching for a parking space. We know there are better solutions out there in the community than the status quo. (More than 3,000 parking tickets were issued on Ruskin Street alone in 2014.) Surface parking is cheaper to build but uses valuable land. Underground parking costs tens of millions of dollars more, but saves land. We need to find the right balance, and with your help we will.

Parking is important to the patient experience. Just ask anyone who has circled the Civic to visit or drop off a loved one. Our parking dilemma should be seen as an opportunity to harness the views of the experts and the community-at-large to design a parking solution that works for all of us. We see the NCC consultations as the start to engaging with our neighbours and the region. We are committed to consulting on parking and hospital design.

Finding the right location with the right amount of space is the top priority. After that, we will build a modern hospital that enables us to continue to be inspired by the world’s best researchers, and be driven by the compassion that makes care at The Ottawa Hospital second to none. That level of care and research will happen in partnership with a city and region that sees its success and the success of its health-care institutions as one and the same.

We are grateful to the NCC staff members for the time and energy they are devoting to hearing from the community so that we can get this right. Time is of the essence, and finding the right location is the important first step towards building a hospital that will continue to deliver the best possible care for generations to come.

James McCracken is the chair of The Ottawa Hospital Board of Governors.

http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/col...-hospital-site

[zzptichka]

Basically entire column is about parking parking parking and zero mention of transit accessibility. Priorities!
Can't make it any more obvious that inconvenient transit access and acres of cheap surface parking is all they care about

[Richard Eade]

An interesting article, indeed. It does appear to be written with the goal of convincing people that the building must be large, low, and sprawling and that there must be a large expanse of surface parking around it; and that it all needs to be accommodated in the city core.

Apparently, a third of the ‘visits’ (presumably those in for help, not those visiting patients) came from Ottawa’s central core. I’m shocked, just shocked, to hear that most people going to that hospital came from around it. OK, that was sarcasm. Of course people would go to their closest hospital. What really surprises me is that the number is only one third. Where are the other two thirds of the patients coming from? Is there a better location for the hospital that could better balance those numbers to be half of the patients coming from inside and half coming from outside the city’s core? Would that make the most sense? Maybe not since the number of patients doesn’t tell anything about how far (and, thus how long) patients need to travel to get to the hospital.

Remember, this is the region’s ONLY trauma hospital; so it needs to be positioned to serve the entire region, not just the city’s core. If there needs to be medical services specifically dedicated to the core, then perhaps there should be a smaller, ‘Community’ hospital (like the Queensway-Carleton or the Montfort) built in the core with a full trauma centre built in the center of the region.

There is also talk that the Civic campus of the Ottawa Hospital needs to accommodate all of the research that could happen there. Maybe that research also doesn’t need to be in the core. There is, currently, space available out at the General campus; so maybe that is where research should be centered. There are strong arguments for clustering research, so let’s do that at the General. This would reduce the land requirement for a new hospital while making better use of the empty space at the General.

As for the idea that some main components of a hospital “must be next to each other because minutes matter”; there is no benefit in having to walk 50 metres on the same floor over taking a fast elevator one floor up and having only 5 metres to walk. A sprawling building is not the most efficient, distance-wise. A compact cube would have shorter average distances than a flat building of the same area. The building must be designed to be efficient, meaning that facilities that need to be close to each other are close – regardless of whether that closeness is one over the other or beside.

Parking is a requirement for hospitals; there is no question about that. The majority of people going to the hospital, be they patients, visitors, or employees, will arrive by private vehicle. There needs to be sufficient parking – but it should not be on expansive surface lots. If an acre of flat land can house about 150 parking spaces, the Civic’s claim that it needs 3,400 spaces means that it would require almost 23 acres just for parking! This is for a hospital that is planning to have 700-800 beds. I say put the parking into a structure and use less space; granted, at additional cost. (Although Canadians do have a reputation for liking to drive to places; with the Guinness World Record for the largest parking lot still belonging to the West Edmonton Mall.)

Hey, how about this crazy idea: do a real analysis of what medical services are needed and where they should be located and then check to see if there is space in the area/areas that things need to be built. And, if it turns out that there should be a single, large hospital near the Civic’s current location, I’d vote to put it on the old Sir John Carling Building’s site and have it cascade down the slope into (the temporary) Queen Julianna Park. Perhaps, use a parking structure to build up the level so that there are only a few floors of hospital above the parking, stretching onto the higher grade. If it turns out that there should be a local hospital in the core and a major trauma centre elsewhere, then find land that works specificly with that scenario.

[1overcosc]

The whole comparison exercise seems to be designed to show that the Farm is the only spot. At least by doing this, they can show that they tried to find alternatives but failed.

[Mikeed]

I still don't fully understand why Bayview Yards is not being considered; other then it being the most challenging to do right, and requiring the most amount of political effort. I should be highlighted- all the land in question is already owned by both the NCC & the City.

It is the most urban of the available locations and the opportunities are numerous:

A Hospital at Bayview Yards would arguably have the best road access to urban Ottawa- from Lowertown & Sandy Hill, to the Parliamentary district and Core, Centreville/Chinatown/Little Italy/ and the West neighborhoods. This is because on both ends of the campus you would have access to the Parkway and Scott Street, which both quickly interconnect with the vast majority of main avenues accessing the urban area of Ottawa.

The Campus would also be located central connection of NS/EW transit that gives direct transit ride to the campus from ALL areas of Ottawa. I think more people take the bus to the hospital then you would think. From the huge number of employees & medical students to patients, esp. elderly patients.

This becomes more important when you consider that a main campus of a hospital supports an entire ecosystem of outpatient clinics and other services. Where ever the campus goes gradually these developments will shift towards the hospital. There are many clinics and outpatient services along Carling for example. That's where my clinic is- which is in a massive building that hosts many other specialist and family clinics.

When you consider the area around Bayview Yards- From East to West you have the east side of the core around Lyon, the escarpment CDP, the Flats, the current Bayview Yards CDP, Tunney's and Westboro. North to South you have numerous superblocks, the Preston TOD node and the old NRC campus. This is a tremendous amount of development that will over the next 50 years make the Bayview Yards area really a core area of the city.

Putting a major institution like the central hospital near the centre of all this growth is ideal as it would remove some of the supply in land and encourage a more mixed use development. Currently, it's a whole lot of condos and a possible entertainment district in the flats. Moving the hospital here and with the development of the Innovation Centre will encourage more employment on the NSEW transit access and a more mixed use development of all these neighborhoods. In the form of Clinics and Office space.

Getting the Bayview Yards CDP right 100% with a proper vision is vitally important to the future of Ottawa.

All the land here is owned by the NCC and the City of Ottawa. So with the Feds I don't see how you could develop this area as a hospital campus with ample parking. The parkway is already often touted as under used. Laroche Park could easy moved to the Parkway lands across the roundabout.

As an aside I truly believe it makes more sense to have BRT come across the PoW bridge and leave space for BRT station at Bayview.

[acottawa]

With the city already committed to the innovation lab thing the Bayview site is pretty small. Even if the hospital were taller than the hospital is proposing I don't think it would fit. Also, it is at the very edge of the city.

[rocketphish]

Save the environment – Put the Civic hospital campus on the LRT line

Barry Padolsky
Published on: September 20, 2016 | Last Updated: September 20, 2016 3:59 PM EDT

In November 2014, the former Stephen Harper government allocated 60 acres of the Central Experimental Farm, a National Historic Site, for a new Civic hospital campus.

On May 20, 2016, Mélanie Joly, minister of Canadian Heritage responsible for the National Capital Commission, halted the former government’s decision. She directed the NCC to take a fresh look at prospective sites in the core of the National Capital.

The NCC will evaluate 12 federally owned properties using three key criteria to recommend a “preferred site” by November 2016. The three criteria are:

1. Does the preferred site meet the goals of the NCC’s Plan for Canada’s Capital and federal priorities?
2. Does the preferred site meet the goals of the City of Ottawa’s Official Plan and the City’s strategic priorities?
3. Does the preferred site permit the creation of an excellent hospital?

The NCC, however, will be compromised by the Ottawa Hospital’s “21st century campus vision,” which requires a 60-acre site so that it can build a hospital campus whose dominant land use will be roads and parking.

This vision is revealed in the Ottawa Hospital’s 73-page report dated April 2016 in which architectural “test plans” assume that only 19 per cent of the proposed 60-acre site is needed for hospital buildings. Astoundingly, according to that version of the plan, more than 42 per cent of the site would be dedicated, not to health care facilities, but to roads and parking.

Roads and parking?

Writing in the Citizen on Sept. 19, James McCracken, chair of the Ottawa Hospital Board of Governors, admits that the future Civic hospital “needs” 3,400 parking spaces. Conservatively, this would translate into 1,241,000 person trips per year by car, if each parking space were used only once a day. Is the Ottawa Hospital unaware of climate change and the need to build sustainable cities?

Without question, the NCC should recommend a site for the new Civic located on Ottawa’s new LRT Rapid Transit network (Confederation Line or Trillium Line).

Why? The Federal government’s climate change strategy calls for Canada’s cities to integrate land use and public transit in order to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by diminishing our dependence on the automobile as the primary form of urban transportation. Locating the hospital within 600 metres of an LRT station would help to meet this goal. It would also comply with the NCC’s “Plan For Canada’s Capital” which promotes integrated land use and “sustainable mobility,” particularly on federal lands.

It would also contribute to the Ontario government’s new Climate Change Action Plan and the City of Ottawa Official Plan’s strategic priorities. Specifically, the city is committed to achieving the goal of a “transit modal split” of 50 per cent within the greenbelt by 2031. This means that the new Civic hospital should be accessible by excellent public rapid transit to half of all future hospital visitors, ambulatory patients, staff and volunteers.

Finally, locating the new Civic within 600 metres of an LRT station would directly promote public health. The link between climate change and the threat to public health is now evidence-based.

At the recent Canadian Medical Association Conference in Vancouver, the CMA recognized that climate change is the “greatest global health threat of the 21st century.” The link between carbon emissions and global warming is no longer challenged. The CMA Council committed to actively promoting its climate change and human health policy among Canada’s physicians.

It is evident that the NCC’s report to Minister Joly (and Catherine McKenna, minister of the Environment and Climate Change) should recommend a site, any site, on Ottawa’s $2.1-billion LRT Rapid Transit network. The NCC’s three broad criteria naturally lead to this conclusion. Why select a site that accelerates climate change and contributes to the erosion of public health?

Let us reflect on the Hippocratic Oath that Canada’s medical community observes: “Primum non nocere.” First, do no harm.”

Physician, heal thyself.

Barry Padolsky is an Ottawa architect, urban designer and heritage consultant.

http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/col...n-the-lrt-line

[lrt's friend]

Ha! But doesn't the hospital need as much parking revenue as possible? Which means minimizing public transit use and limiting parking on surrounding streets.

[rocketphish]

Ottawa Hospital pledges consultation on controversial parking lots at new Civic campus site

Don Butler, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: September 20, 2016 | Last Updated: September 20, 2016 6:51 PM EDT

Just ahead of an open house that will showcase 12 possible sites for The Ottawa Hospital’s new Civic campus, the hospital has pledged to hold public consultations on one of the project’s most contentious issues: the massive amount of real estate allotted to parking.

The hospital made the promise in material quietly posted to its website late last week. Once a site for the new $2-billion Civic is selected, it says, the hospital will consult with the community “on a number of issues, including parking, development principles and design.

“This will result in the best possible integration with the surrounding community,” the hospital says, adding: “We need to get parking right from the get-go.”

Parking has emerged as a key issue in the quest to find the most appropriate site for the new Civic. The hospital says it needs a site of 50 to 60 acres, but 15 to 20 acres of that would be used for parking and transit access, according to the hospital’s website.

That doesn’t sit well with groups who oppose the use of Central Experimental Farm land for the new hospital. (Four of the 12 sites being evaluated by the National Capital Commission are on the farm, a National Historic Site of Canada.)

Most of the proposed 3,400 parking spaces would be on the surface, and would cost a relatively modest $16 million to build, according to the hospital.

By comparison, the hospital says a parking garage would cost $100 million and underground parking a whopping $291 million.

“The province does not fund costs for parking facilities,” the hospital notes on its website. “Funding solutions would be required to implement the more expensive parking options.”

The Civic’s current parking model doesn’t work, the hospital says on a website page entitled “the parking dilemma.” The layout and location is confusing and overflow traffic shifts the burden to the neighbouring community, it says.

It pledges to engage with the community to find the right answer. “Our solution must consider green space, transit and technological advances, and balance the needs of patient, families, employees and neighbours.”

According to the hospital’s website, 25 acres of the new site will be needed for buildings — 15 acres in the initial phase and a further 10 acres reserved for future expansion.

That differs from an analysis by Ottawa architect Barry Padolsky of an April 2016 report by the hospital.

Based on architectural “test plans” in that report, Padolsky estimated that just 11 acres — less than 20 per cent of the 60-acre site — would be used for medical and support buildings. However, that estimate doesn’t appear to include a provision for future expansion.

The hospital says about seven acres of the site would be “exterior wellness areas,” including therapeutic healing gardens and outdoor or enclosed patios, which are proven to improve health outcomes.

“They are not nice-to-haves,” the hospital says. “They are essential to our patients’ well-being.”

A further six acres would be devoted to access roads, it says.

“We aim to completely reshape the hospital visit from the moment people arrive. This means easy access for emergency vehicles, many points of entry, links to walking and cycling paths, and good parking and transit service.”

The new hospital’s location has been mired in controversy ever since the former Conservative government announced in 2014 that it had agreed to transfer 60 acres of experimental farm land directly across from the existing Civic to The Ottawa Hospital.

That decision was revoked earlier this year by Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly, who asked the NCC to review all potential sites for the hospital and make a recommendation by the end of November.

As part of that process, the NCC will hold an open house on the site review process at the Canadian War Museum on Thursday from 3 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., including a 90-minute presentation and question-and-answer session beginning at 7 p.m.

In addition, it will conduct online consultations on the potential sites and proposed evaluation criteria until Oct. 6.

dbutler@postmedia.com
twitter.com/ButlerDon

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...ic-campus-site

[rocketphish]

The Ottawa Hospital Civic Campus Consultation site:

http://www.ottawahospital.on.ca/newc...tation_en.html

[SkeggsEggs]

Considering how high the parking fees are I'm sure there will always be overflow into the surrounding streets. There's a health clinic on Cleopatra in Nepean and the street infront of it is packed with people who don't wanna pay the parking. Just put the thing on the LRT so people have an efficient means of transport there aside from their cars. I'm sure the hospital will still make PLENTY of money from their parking rates.

[lrt's friend]

“The province does not fund costs for parking facilities,” the hospital notes on its website. “Funding solutions would be required to implement the more expensive parking options.”

This says it all, doesn't it? We are doomed to massive surface parking lots. And the comment about overflow parking is really mostly about people trying to find a way to avoid the exorbitant parking rates. This will always happen.

Of course, if we take the price of land out of the equation, this just makes surface parking financially that much more attractive.

[passwordisnt123]

Barry Padolsky's piece linked to above is excellent. I definitely agree.

Somebody really does need to be a bit more explicit in calling the Ottawa Hospital out on their bullshit. The notion that the replacement Civic Hospital needs 60 acres is absolutely absurd. Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City has more beds than all four campuses of the Ottawa Hospital put together and it does so on considerably less than 60 acres. Nobody—absolutely NOBODY—is talking about how horrible Mount Sinai is or how it can't possibly keep operating with less than 60 acres.

[Uhuniau]

Here, Ottawa Hospital: Build all the parking you want at the new hospital.

One condition: the new Civic has to be right smack-dab on an LRT line, either existing or to be completed and operational on or before the day the new hospital opens. And you pay to build the station that serves the hospital, if it doesn't already exist or isn't already on the books.

Oh? You don't think the hospital is in the transportation business? Then what's all this about parking, then?

[rocketphish]

Civic site debate misplaced – how are we going to pay for and build it?

Randall Denley
Published on: September 21, 2016 | Last Updated: September 21, 2016 1:37 PM EDT

The fuss over the new Civic campus of The Ottawa Hospital is sadly typical of how we do things in this city.

The new hospital will mean an exciting, transformative change for health care here, one that is going to cost Ottawans a lot of money. And yet, we aren’t even talking about these big points, focusing instead on the site, how much parking there will be and even what kind of transit is needed.

It’s reminiscent of our never-ending local debate about a bridge across the Ottawa River, which has now morphed into a $2-billion toll tunnel.

It’s worth remembering that the idea of using Central Experimental Farm land for the hospital didn’t exactly come out of a clear blue sky when it was announced by the federal government back in 2014. That was the culmination of a site-selection process that began in 2007 and was remarkably similar to the redo that is now being conducted by the National Capital Commission.

The hospital needs about 60 acres of land close to the core of the city. We should be happy that such sites exist, not wringing our hands over the blow to soil science on the farm. The only two such choices are the farm and Tunney’s Pasture, which might be somewhat OK once all the buildings are torn down and all the public servants moved elsewhere.

In November, the NCC is likely to recommend the Experimental Farm site that has caused all the complaining, because it’s simply the most logical location. That recommendation can’t come a moment too soon, because this is a major project that is long overdue and will take a decade to develop.

Anyone who has been inside the Civic knows that it is a cobbled-together mess of old buildings that are completely inappropriate for Ottawa’s major trauma and teaching centre. Any further renovations would be money poorly spent. Ottawans should be clamouring for a new, modern hospital rather than getting themselves tied in knots over the site or the fact that people might drive cars to get there.

Not surprisingly, a lot has changed in hospital design in the nearly 100 years since the Civic was built. The new hospital will be a low-rise horizontal structure with private rooms. It will work better for patients, staff and academic teaching. It will finally give us a major, modern hospital of the type that is the norm elsewhere.

This is going to cost Ottawans a significant amount of money and the big debate should be over how we will pay for it. The hospital is estimated to cost $2 billion, but that’s a ballpark figure. Expect it to go up. The province typically covers 90 per cent of the cost, so we will have to find at least $200 million.

In Windsor, they are working on a hospital project of similar cost and the city council has approved a one per cent hospital tax levy to cover the local share. Will our councillors, who judge their job performance by the tax increase, be willing to do the same?

It’s probably not realistic to expect that the whole cost can be covered by donors to The Ottawa Hospital Foundation. The foundation brings in about $20 million a year, but will continue to be responsible for costs at the General campus and continuing costs at the Civic.

The provincial funding is not a sure thing, although it’s likely. The province spends about $1.2 billion a year on hospital capital projects, an amount that does not meet demand. Ottawa Hospital officials are confident that the age and importance of our hospital will move it to the top of the list. Still, other hospitals are securing funding while we go on about the site.

Nearly two years have passed since the federal government approved the best and most obvious site for the Civic expansion. It took seven years to get that far. It’s about time we got excited about the new hospital and started talking about how we are going to build it, not where.

Randall Denley is an Ottawa commentator, novelist and former Ontario PC candidate. Contact him at randalldenley1@gmail.com.

http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/col...r-and-build-it

[passwordisnt123]

Good lord. We should take note of Randall Denley's face and make sure never to let him within 1 square mile of any urban planning initiative.

"Not surprisingly, a lot has changed in hospital design in the nearly 100 years since the Civic was built. The new hospital will be a low-rise horizontal structure with private rooms."

Those might be the two dumbest consecutive sentences I've read in a long while. The crowning achievement of 100 years worth of hospital design is that apparently low-rise sprawling structures with 60 acres of suburban parking lots is the pinnacle of hospital design nowadays? Weird. I never saw that memo.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by passwordisnt123

Those might be the two dumbest consecutive sentences I've read in a long while. The crowning achievement of 100 years worth of hospital design is that apparently low-rise sprawling structures with 60 acres of suburban parking lots is the pinnacle of hospital design nowadays? Weird. I never saw that memo.

I have. I've noticed a number of new hospital construction projects in various (small town) settings where two-storey hospital buildings have been replaced with new, single-storey, office-parky, 1960s-philosophy sprawlspitals.

[lrt's friend]

Good grief, the selection of the Experimental Farm site was dropped on the public like a bomb shell. When was this ever really a public discussion? This was a political choice.

And as passwordisnt123 alluded to, why are we trying to build an urban hospital with a suburban design? It is funny that an article was just published saying that the city is trying to achieve 50% transit modal share within the Greenbelt (a laughable goal given the lousy local transit being offered in most areas) and then we want to build a new hospital with thousands of surface parking spaces and no doubt, widening surrounding roads to accommodate the growing traffic. Look for Fisher Avenue having to be turned into a multi-lane boulevard. That will be coming next.

Randall Denley has become a political hack. Any decision made by the Conservatives was the right decision. He just comes up with anything to support it.

[passwordisnt123]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

I have. I've noticed a number of new hospital construction projects in various (small town) settings where two-storey hospital buildings have been replaced with new, single-storey, office-parky, 1960s-philosophy sprawlspitals.

Fair enough. That makes more sense in a small town setting but surely people can rightly be mocked and ridiculed for suggesting something like that in a city of Ottawa's size, no?