08-23-2018, 09:29 PM
(08-20-2018, 01:20 PM)jgsz Wrote:(08-20-2018, 08:57 AM)robdrimmie Wrote: I'm in complete agreement. I think Aissa is likely pandering to Litt's audience by touching on the topic, and generally folks (I include myself here) don't have very clear understanding of whose responsibility such a thing would be. Aissa gets to say it will be a focus of his and there's a lot of people outside of Kitchener and Waterloo who would very reasonably think "yeah, another hospital with ready access for the townships would be great!"
A number of years ago I had lunch with UW President David Johnson and Vice President Amit Chakma and Johnson told me that he really wanted to see a teaching hospital in KW. He thought it would fit in well between St. Mary's and Grand River Hospital. He mentioned that several key ingredients were already in place, namely the School of Pharmacy, along with a branch of the School of Optometry and the Centre for Family Medicine. Plus, Conestoga College has a nursing school. The area around the School of Pharmacy has changed a lot since then so if KW got a teaching hospital I don't know where it would be built. I suppose the old Uniroyal factory on Strange Street may be a possibility.
I believe the uWaterloo (although it may be the City of Kitchener) owns the vacant land beside the School of Pharmacy. which could be the place to build the teaching building/hospital site for a Waterloo Region teaching hospital. Like St. Mike's in Toronto there is the opportunity to build the hospital up (a vertical hospital) on the King-Victoria location.
The other option, I suggested, awhile back, was that a deal could be brokered with SunLife to build a new teaching hospital building that would take over the exterior ground parking for SunLife employees. It would be on King Street with two LRT stops available and make much better use of a parking lot. Underground parking, for both the teaching hospital and SunLife, could be part of the design build.