Sudbury Regional Hospital will likely set aside plans to add onto the one-site hospital’s three-floor centre tower now that the Ministry of Health has said it won’t give $20 million for a shelled-in floor.
That was the word from hospital vice-president Joe Pilon on Friday.
Despite the fact the Ministry has never funded a shelled-in space, the hospital was holding out hope it would shell in a fourth floor in the centre tower, above which the hospital could build in the future.
“They have a strict policy and they’ve never wavered from it,” Pilon said.
The hospital’s long-range planning committee, chaired by Tim James, will now consider other options to build space for 100 to 150 additional acute care beds.
Those options include building a six-storey tower in the hospital’s parking lot and a parking garage to provide for parking, adding onto the regional cancer centre building and negotiating with the Sudbury and District Health Unit to buy its building at the corner of Paris Street and Walden Road.
“We’re looking at any space that’s in this 35 acres between Ramsey Lake Road and Walden Road and Paris,” Pilon said.
The long-range planning committee will present its options to the hospital’s board of directors next winter or spring.
The one-site construction project is scheduled to wind up by December 2009, and will have space for 429 beds, Pilon said.
Construction of another tower won’t be done for at least 10 years, he said. The hospital will have to stand in line behind other hospitals that also have building projects.
