Hospitals in KW

[ac3r]

The new Windsor hospital (60 acres) and the new Ottawa Hospital (50 acres).  In  Windsor's case, I gather that it's out in the burbs.  In Ottawa's case, the GofC made Experimental Farm land available.  Edit, I haven't seen an explanation of why the GofO is insisting on such big sites - perhaps to accomodate other medical-related developments down the road?

There is no conceivable reasonable justification for insisting on such a large site.

I mean obviously, ceteris paribus (“all other things being equal”), a bigger site is better, but the real estate market is about as far from ceteris paribus as you can get — a large site is almost certainly out in the boonies, so by specifying that up front they are pre-determining another variable, and pre-determining it wrong.

As an example of how this could go wrong in the other direction, imagine they understood that it’s important for hospitals (specifically, emergency departments, among other parts of the hospital I can think of) to be centrally located. So they specify “within 500m of Kitchener City Hall”. That would force an unreasonable expense for vacant land or require an extreme downsizing of the hospital or probably both.

Unfortunately, we still live in a society where building some huge thing way out in car-only land still isn’t immediately obviously a big fail to most people, so this will probably go forward with a huge site in the middle of nowhere.

Actually, it occurs to me that a lot of our problems, especially around cars, stem from the same sort of consideration. I would argue that, ceteris paribus, it’s obviously good for stores, offices, etc. to have good road access and lots of parking. And that can justify modern zoning, parking regulations, freeways, and suburb design. But this particular “ceteris paribus” is doing a lot of work, and understanding that turns this argument on its head; here in the real world, none of those things are “ceteris paribus”; everything costs a lot to build, it encourages car dependence, causes pollution, and ends up raising costs even more than it initially appears while making it harder for those who choose or want to choose differently. So in reality it’s better to allow and even encourage development that does not cater to motor vehicles or does so to a lesser extent.

Ugh.

Yes there is. I know the car lives rent free in the minds of a lot of you on this website, but the size of the property/project they're seeking has nothing to do with cars. Will it be built in an area that is not well serviced by public transportation (at least at present)? It's possible, but them wanting a significant acreage is unrelated to this. The directors of GRH are not sitting there with a whiteboard on the wall with a big list starting with "1. Hospital must have as much parking as possible"

They want to build a hospital that will be able to handle hundreds of thousands of citizens without having people sleeping on stretchers in the hallways as they frequently do now. Given the extremely rapid population growth of Waterloo Region, this is perfectly understandable. Through the company I work for and through my partner providing me information about the hospital's needs as she is an employee there, I've been able to have an understanding on what GRH is aiming for with this hospital. They are looking to build an extremely top of the line healthcare centre for Waterloo Region and beyond - while also future proofing everything so it can evolve.

I mean what do you guys expect? A hospital with absolutely no parking which you can only access with bike lanes?