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[SteelTown]

Mac steps up downtown search

Wade Hemsworth
The Hamilton Spectator
(Nov 22, 2007)

McMaster University has identified three other downtown sites for a major new family health centre, but continues to court Hamilton's public school board in the hope of making a deal on the keystone property where the board's headquarters now stands.

The university is not disclosing its alternative locations, but the list does not include previously identified contingencies immediately behind City Hall and at McMaster's own continuing education centre in the former county courthouse at Main and Hughson streets.

Meanwhile, the university and David Braley -- the benefactor who has put $10 million toward a new family medicine centre -- stepped up their courtship of the school board this week, in advance of two board meetings that will deal with the subject early next month.

In separate conversations with education director Chris Spence, they emphasized McMaster's readiness to consider options that could see the university and the board work together, possibly in a single building.

Braley said he considers the project so important that he is prepared to buy the property personally and will even consider financing the building if necessary.

"The most important thing is that we're looking after people who need a family doctor," he said in an interview.

The university's plan is designed to solve two problems: to build a major new multidisciplinary training centre for a growing number of family doctors and other clinicians, and to provide primary medical care for as many as 15,000 patients.

The university needs at least 100,000 square feet -- roughly the same floor space occupied by the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Glanbrook.

The centre could see as many as 75,000 visits per year. Braley and the university hope those visits and related activities would also help with a third challenge: invigorating Hamilton's blighted core.

The school board, meanwhile, is considering which of six options it will pursue for seven of its administrative buildings across the city, including its Education Centre, set on a property with exposures on King, Main and Bay streets.

Ideas on the table range from selling the headquarters property and moving to the Mountain to keeping the 1967 building and adding to it. Among the issues are cost, the effect of leaving downtown and the architectural significance of the present building.

The board is to meet in camera Dec. 3 when it will discuss funding scenarios that could be attached to those options. It is to debate the issue publicly Dec. 10.

Meanwhile, with medical students already in the system who are destined for specialty in the expanding family-medicine program, and McMaster already straining its existing facilities, expansion must be complete by 2010, said David Price, chair of family medicine at the DeGroote School of Medicine.

"That train has left the station and it's well down the track," he said.

Given that it would take two years to design and build a facility, the university needs to secure a site within the next year, he said. McMaster wants a property with easy access to bus routes that would carry patients from every part of the city.

The university's proposal for the centre was revealed in late June when Braley donated $50 million to McMaster's medical school, including $10 million in seed money for the project. Braley said he hopes the university and school board can work out a mutually beneficial plan.

"This is the place where it should be," he said.

Spence said his job is to make sure trustees understand McMaster's intentions as they consider their "incredibly difficult" decision.

"When all is said and done, we've got some issues that we have to address. I absolutely believe that has to be the driver for the decision-making," he said.

"But we're also part of a community. We don't work in isolation. We're not an island. That's why it's important that they get all those pieces. That's not to push them in one direction or the other, but it's in fairness to them that they get all the information."