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When Ottawa’s new Civic hospital is complete, it will be encircled by more parking spots than almost any new hospital in the province. And the majority of those 3,400 proposed spots could be surface parking, stretching over 15-20 acres, along with access roads. An average Costco parking lot, by comparison, contains about 600 spots. The vast parking lots at the Canadian Tire Centre have more than 6,500 spots.
There are early signs that parking will be the next battle on the road to a new $2 billion super hospital in Ottawa. It is a controversial issue, partly driven by provincial funding policy. And Ottawa is not alone.
In communities across Ontario, critics are lining up against what they say are hospital plans that promote sprawl and run counter to modern planning philosophy, which encourages denser development. In Windsor, where critics oppose plans to build a new hospital on the edge of the city rather than downtown, the proposed hospital has been called “a parking lot with a hospital attached.”
In Ottawa, where the new hospital will be centrally located, architect Barry Padolsky calls the plans to locate it on 50-60 acres with 15-20 acres for parking and access roads an “American suburban model. It has an enormous footprint.” He argues that the new hospital should be built near the LRT or the O-Train and encourage use of public transit rather than parking. The fact that four of the sites being considered for the new hospital are located on the Central Experimental Farm makes the prospect of acres of paved parking lots a tough sell, given the criticism around selection of a site for the hospital.
Critics of new hospital planning are not the only ones for whom parking is touchy, though. Parking is both emotional for patients and visitors — as well as area residents — and a tough financial issue for already squeezed hospitals.
This week, after years of pressure from hospital patients and visitors, the province froze hospital parking fees and told hospitals that charge more than $10 a day to offer 50 per cent discounts for longer stays. Patients and visitors have long complained that they already pay taxes for health care and high parking costs function as a further tax.
Parking revenues are not a huge amount of money compared to hospital budgets. But hospitals have come to rely on it to buy equipment and pay for other capital expenses. In 2015/16, parking revenue at the Civic campus totalled $3.93 million. Provincial changes to parking rates limit parking as a revenue stream. Provincial policy also helps determine hospital land use. The province pays the majority of the cost of new hospitals — in Ottawa, a $400 million fundraising campaign, the hospital’s biggest, will raise funds for the community’s share of the $2 billion hospital. But the province does not pay for parking structures.
The Ottawa Hospital has not yet determined whether all parking will be on the surface or in parking structures. But information it has prepared on the issue notes that building parking structures will add significantly to the cost of the hospital: $16 million for surface parking, $100 million for above-ground parking and $291 million for underground parking. “Funding solutions would be required to implement the more expensive parking options,” said the online document about parking at the new hospital.
David Musyj is the CEO of Windsor Regional Hospital which is planning for 3,000 surface parking spots at its new hospital. Surface parking was an obvious choice, he said.
Trying to raise money in the community for a parking garage, he said, would be impossible. “It’s like saying ‘We could have had two MRIs, but instead we built this parking garage where we could have had surface parking.’ Sometimes you have no choice.”
That is one of the multiple issues facing The Ottawa Hospital, said Chief Operating Officer Cameron Love. Another sticking point, he said, is that parking space is needed to reduce pressure on patients and visitors (hundreds of whom were issued parking tickets on Ruskin Street, beside the hospital, in 2015), and to provide parking for staff, most of whom currently park at sites leased by the hospital.
The Civic hospital currently has about 1,200 spots for visitors, which Love said are not enough. “There is no questions there is not near enough parking. We do not have the capacity to manage patients.” In addition, according to a hospital spokesperson, the hospital leases about 1,200 parking spots for staff offsite.
Love said mass transit will be an option for some staff, “but most patients, families and visitors are not going to take a transit system (to the hospital).”
Love and Windsor’s Musyj noted that designs for new hospitals make parking much more user-friendly for patients and families, with parking lots designed in hubs that put patients and visitors close to the part of the hospital they are using.
Once the land is chosen, Love said, there will be a more detailed consultation on parking, among other things, which could trim the number of parking spots, something Mark Kristmanson — the head of the NCC — has hinted will happen. “We are very open at looking at options for parking.”
But no matter what the final figure is, Love contends the area needed for a hospital — between 50 and 60 acres — will not change significantly, and that it should not impact the selection of a hospital site.
A key to designing new hospitals, said Musyj, is leaving enough room for eventual expansion.
“If you have the ability to do so, you need to build the hospital on a site that allows for future regeneration. The last thing any of us want is that in 30 years or less when you are looking at expanding that you put yourself in a situation that you have to move.”
But, at a time when the federal government has introduced a carbon tax, Padolsky said encouraging more people to drive is a false economy.
“I think to have The Ottawa Hospital sit around its corporate table imagining it is in the 1950s is irresponsible,” he said. “The hospital is really out of step.”
Related
epayne@postmedia.com
查看原文...
There are early signs that parking will be the next battle on the road to a new $2 billion super hospital in Ottawa. It is a controversial issue, partly driven by provincial funding policy. And Ottawa is not alone.
In communities across Ontario, critics are lining up against what they say are hospital plans that promote sprawl and run counter to modern planning philosophy, which encourages denser development. In Windsor, where critics oppose plans to build a new hospital on the edge of the city rather than downtown, the proposed hospital has been called “a parking lot with a hospital attached.”
In Ottawa, where the new hospital will be centrally located, architect Barry Padolsky calls the plans to locate it on 50-60 acres with 15-20 acres for parking and access roads an “American suburban model. It has an enormous footprint.” He argues that the new hospital should be built near the LRT or the O-Train and encourage use of public transit rather than parking. The fact that four of the sites being considered for the new hospital are located on the Central Experimental Farm makes the prospect of acres of paved parking lots a tough sell, given the criticism around selection of a site for the hospital.
Critics of new hospital planning are not the only ones for whom parking is touchy, though. Parking is both emotional for patients and visitors — as well as area residents — and a tough financial issue for already squeezed hospitals.
This week, after years of pressure from hospital patients and visitors, the province froze hospital parking fees and told hospitals that charge more than $10 a day to offer 50 per cent discounts for longer stays. Patients and visitors have long complained that they already pay taxes for health care and high parking costs function as a further tax.
Parking revenues are not a huge amount of money compared to hospital budgets. But hospitals have come to rely on it to buy equipment and pay for other capital expenses. In 2015/16, parking revenue at the Civic campus totalled $3.93 million. Provincial changes to parking rates limit parking as a revenue stream. Provincial policy also helps determine hospital land use. The province pays the majority of the cost of new hospitals — in Ottawa, a $400 million fundraising campaign, the hospital’s biggest, will raise funds for the community’s share of the $2 billion hospital. But the province does not pay for parking structures.
The Ottawa Hospital has not yet determined whether all parking will be on the surface or in parking structures. But information it has prepared on the issue notes that building parking structures will add significantly to the cost of the hospital: $16 million for surface parking, $100 million for above-ground parking and $291 million for underground parking. “Funding solutions would be required to implement the more expensive parking options,” said the online document about parking at the new hospital.
David Musyj is the CEO of Windsor Regional Hospital which is planning for 3,000 surface parking spots at its new hospital. Surface parking was an obvious choice, he said.
Trying to raise money in the community for a parking garage, he said, would be impossible. “It’s like saying ‘We could have had two MRIs, but instead we built this parking garage where we could have had surface parking.’ Sometimes you have no choice.”
That is one of the multiple issues facing The Ottawa Hospital, said Chief Operating Officer Cameron Love. Another sticking point, he said, is that parking space is needed to reduce pressure on patients and visitors (hundreds of whom were issued parking tickets on Ruskin Street, beside the hospital, in 2015), and to provide parking for staff, most of whom currently park at sites leased by the hospital.
The Civic hospital currently has about 1,200 spots for visitors, which Love said are not enough. “There is no questions there is not near enough parking. We do not have the capacity to manage patients.” In addition, according to a hospital spokesperson, the hospital leases about 1,200 parking spots for staff offsite.
Love said mass transit will be an option for some staff, “but most patients, families and visitors are not going to take a transit system (to the hospital).”
Love and Windsor’s Musyj noted that designs for new hospitals make parking much more user-friendly for patients and families, with parking lots designed in hubs that put patients and visitors close to the part of the hospital they are using.
Once the land is chosen, Love said, there will be a more detailed consultation on parking, among other things, which could trim the number of parking spots, something Mark Kristmanson — the head of the NCC — has hinted will happen. “We are very open at looking at options for parking.”
But no matter what the final figure is, Love contends the area needed for a hospital — between 50 and 60 acres — will not change significantly, and that it should not impact the selection of a hospital site.
A key to designing new hospitals, said Musyj, is leaving enough room for eventual expansion.
“If you have the ability to do so, you need to build the hospital on a site that allows for future regeneration. The last thing any of us want is that in 30 years or less when you are looking at expanding that you put yourself in a situation that you have to move.”
But, at a time when the federal government has introduced a carbon tax, Padolsky said encouraging more people to drive is a false economy.
“I think to have The Ottawa Hospital sit around its corporate table imagining it is in the 1950s is irresponsible,” he said. “The hospital is really out of step.”
Related
epayne@postmedia.com
查看原文...
