Neighbours pore over details of future Civic hospital plan
Kate Porter | CBC News | Posted: May 31, 2021 8:00 AM | Last Updated: May 31, 2021
Feedback on 1,000-page transportation study due by June 18
Some residents who live near the future Civic campus of The Ottawa Hospital are starting to wade through thousands of pages of details to see how the huge site will be laid out, and are wishing they had more time.
The hospital presented its plans to a city committee at the beginning of May for the long-planned $2.8-billion hospital on an escarpment near Dow's Lake, due to open in 2028.
While opening day is a long way off, construction of the four-storey parking garage is due to start in 2022. Ottawa city council must first approve a master plan for the site, which is expected to go before planning committee in late August.
That means people like Karen Wright, president of the Civic Hospital Neighbourhood Association, must pore over documents made public on the city's website just over a week ago, and get her feedback to city planners by June 18.
She's excited for the hospital, which aside from light rail is one of the biggest projects the city has ever seen, but she worries about that timing.
"I know we won't see a hospital being built until 2024, but this site plan will put into black and white the plans of what it's going to look like," Wright said.
Main entrance on Carling
The new hospital has been in the works for years, and community groups have been providing the hospital input over the past three. Neighbourhood associations around Dow's Lake and in the Carlington area recently received a briefing by hospital and city officials
"Overall, there are some wonderful things in the summary we've seen," said Wright. The Trillium O-Train station will be integrated into the hospital site, and pathways run through so the hospital is not a "separate island," she said.
She's also pleased Queen Juliana Park will be relocated as a green roof on the parking garage.
"We were very concerned that was going to be removed and literally pave paradise and put in a parking lot," she said.
Wright sees a lot of long nights ahead reading the 1,044-page transportation study to see how hospital traffic might reach Highway 417.
The document does show the main public entrance to the campus will line up with Champagne Avenue instead of Sherwood Drive, in order to limit traffic cutting through the neighbourhood.
Ambulances will use Maple Drive in the Central Experimental Farm to reach the back of hospital.
3,099 parking spaces
On the whole, the new campus is expected to be much bigger than the current century-old one located a kilometre to the west.
By the time it's fully built in 2048 — when the University of Ottawa Heart Institute is set to relocate to the site — the new hospital is projected to have twice as much floor space and double the number of beds of the current Civic campus, and employ three times more staff.
Even by opening day in seven years, transportation experts project 30 per cent of staff and visitors will arrive by public transit, while 65 per cent would arrive by car.
In all, the site will have 3,099 parking spaces, with 2,500 of those spaces in the new public garage.
As for an existing parking lot at Dow's Lake that many residents currently use in the winter for skating on the Rideau Canal, it will be redeveloped. The hospital will reserve 200 spaces on the garage's main floor for the National Capital Commission and public events.
Hospital officials were not available for comment by deadline.