healthcare and wellness : Development News

One of the largest houses on Admiral Road, the Annex nexus that's home to an Atwood, a Clarkson, a Ralston Saul and a Weston, belongs to the Salvation Army, and its massive renovation is close to complete.

The house at number 78, built in 1911 and acquired by the Salvation Army in 1966, is part of the religious organization's Homestead program for substance abusing women.

The renovation was funded largely through donations, including one for $1.5 million from the W. Garfield Weston Foundation. The renovations are comprehensive, according to Major Elizabeth Price, Homestead's executive director.

""The heating, plumbing and electrical systems will be updated," she says in a release. "Every part of the building requires access to stairs, which prevents us from servicing women with mobility issues. A small elevator will be installed. Program spaces will be more accessible, larger and brighter. The building will be environmentally friendly. We will be able to partner with more agencies. Residential space will be cleaner, safer, and brighter and will maintain a home-like environment."

The renovation began a year ago, and is expected to be completed shortly.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Elizabeth Price

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Qi Natural Food has opened a new location double the size of its first.

The 2,000 square foot shop at Bloor and Christie expanded into a second, 4,000 square foot location at 572 Bloor West, called Herbs and Nutrition, just east of Bathurst in the old Payless Shoes space.

Owners Joanne and Yong Nam Hur have put their son, Ken, in charge of the new location.

"It's a full grocery store," says Ken Hur. "We're going to have lots more household items. We have a produce section, which we didn't have room for before, and a larger bulk section as well."

Though Hur says the renovation was not extensive, limited to re-flooring and the removal of some drywall and installing new lighting, the work took two months, before the store opened in December.

The Hurs signed the lease for the new space last summer.

Qi has another location at on Eglinton west of Bathurst.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Ken Hur

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Work on the foundation for the first building of the new George Brown campus on the waterfront is nearing completion. The 330,000 square foot, 8-storey building with underground parking on the 0.83-hectare site is expected to cost a total of $175 million.

What's currently known as Building A, the larger of two buildings that will house the campus's four health sciences schools, is expected to be able to accommodate its first students in the fall of 2012. It was designed by Stantec and KPMB, and construction is being managed by EllisDon.

"There were many practical reasons for proceeding with the waterfront location," says Lorie Shekter-Wolfson, dean and assistant vice-president for the Waterfront Campus development, "namely the close proximity to our existing St. James campus -- but the fact that Waterfront Toronto was looking for a post-secondary institution to help revitalize the waterfront made our involvement a natural fit."

Once complete, the new campus will be able to accommodate about 4,000 students in its dental, nursing, health management, continuing education and "health and wellness" schools.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Lorie Shekter-Wolfson


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When the model of the final plans for the new Women's College Hospital were unveiled at the end of September, the press release was headed "One thousand women. One thousand voices. One hospital reinvented to meet their needs."

And according to hospital president and CEO Marilyn Emery, those 1,000 women interviewed online, by phone and in focus groups, had a profound effect on what the new hospital is going to look like, and how it's going to operate.

As a result of their two years of research, the hospital decided that privacy, safety, flexible family eating areas with diverse food options, open spaces with curved walls and staircases, and accessibility are all big priorities.

"Safety and privacy for some women means there's an opportunity to use a washroom that's a single-unit washroom instead of communal," Emery says, "especially for trans women, and it's considered a safety issue for many trans women."

But it was the discussions of accessibility, which Emery figured after 30 years in the healthcare industry she knew all about, that surprised her most.

"One thing that I learned from listening to women with disabilities was from a woman who herself was very, very large -- she required a mobility device," Emery says. "She said that through her entire adult life, she has never been able to undergo a physical examination in a room with the door shut because either the room wasn't large enough, or you couldn't shut the door with all of what was needed in the room. On the one hand, I couldn't believe my ears, but on the other hand, all I had to do was look at this woman to say, absolutely. We don't routinely build space that accommodates that kind of disability. It's a lot more than wheelchair access via a ramp in and out of a building."

The research encompassed a massive variety of communities and perspectives, including seniors, lesbian and queer women, lesbian and queer youth, transgendered women, women with addictions, abused women, women with disabilities, women living with HIV/AIDS, street workers, women with mental health issues, low-income women, recent immigrants, Tamil women, Bengali women, Caribbean women and Mandarin-speaking women.

The $460-million project is expected to open in 2016.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Marilyn Emery

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After more than 30 years operating out of an old gas station, the ambulance station at 643 Eglinton West is getting a new home.

After the old place was demolished in June of last year, and the soil reclaimed over the next several months, construction began in March on a brand new Emergency Medical Services station to serve the area between Keele and Eglinton and Sunnybrook Hospital.

"We're planning to garage three or four vehicles indoors when it opens," says David Ralph, the commander of program development and service quality. The previous facility only allowed for two.

The $2.6-million project, for which the steel framing began last week, is expected to be completed in December.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: David Ralph

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The Stonegate Farmers' Market, a 13-stall weekly summer market run by the Stonegate Community Health Centre, has received a $1,400 grant from the city to beautify itself.

Since getting the grant, part of the city's Neighbourhood Beautification Program, some new signs were made up and some of the noticeably old tables were replaced.

The market is set up every summer weekend just west of the Humber and north of the Queensway on Park Lawn Road, which its administrator calls the "invisible dividing line between the neighbourhood's lower income apartments and higher income homes.

"We also had a competition," says Julia Graham, the Stonegate community health worker in charge of the market, which is currently in its sixth year, "where customers could vote on which stall was the nicest, and whichever vendor won would get a tent to set up their stall under."

In addition to a couple of tents, the grant money will also buy chairs for the many seniors the market attracts each week.
 
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Julia Graham

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It's 21 years late, but Baywatch has finally made it to Pickering.

This month, the City of Pickering completed a water safety program involving the permanent installation of signs and buoys in Frenchman's Bay to enforce long-ignored federal boating laws.

The project has been nicknamed Baywatch.

As the markers began going up, the Durham Regional Police Marine Unit has started stopping boats for speeding, and to do general license and safety checks.

According to Pickering's mayor, the reduced speeds will also have some positive repercussions on the physical environment.

"I congratulate City staff for spearheading this initiative," Mayor Dave Ryan said in a prepared statement, "and partnering with the police marine unit and other stakeholders to enhance community safety while reducing the erosion of our shoreline."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Mark Guinto

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The contract to build the new $460-million Women's College Hospital has been awarded to a consortium including architectural firms Perkins Eastman Black and the IBI Group, and developer Bilfinger Berger Project Investments.

Known collectively as the Women's College Partnership, the group will design, build, finance and maintain the project, which is a redevelopment of the current hospital at 76 Grenville Street.

The new hospital will be 630,000 square feet, with the first phase scheduled to commence construction this summer, and the second phase slated for completion in 2016. The project will be funded by Infrastructure Ontario.

Marilyn Emery, the hospital's president and CEO, described the project in a press release as a "state-of-the-art facility will be an easily accessible hub of programs, clinics and services that integrates care, research and education � all based on how women lead their lives. It will be a hospital designed to keep people out of the hospital."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Tom Boreskie

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Demolition was completed last week, and construction begins this week on the first building in the new $341-million, 536,967 square-foot phase of the 27-acre Centre for Addiction and Mental Health at 1001 Queen Street West at Ossington.

All built to LEED Gold standards, the Gateway Building will be first of the four buildings to go up. Designed by Stantec to mesh, says vice president of communications of community engagement Susan Pigott, with the loft-converted industrial buildings in the neighbourhood, the Gateway will be an outpatient facility with administration offices and a caf�, called the Out of This World Caf�, on a corner lot on Queen Street.

"It's been too long that the southern strip of Queen Street has been a sinkhole," says Pigott, of the situation that's been largely attributable to CAMH's century-long presence. "The new Gateway building will actually have an external face on the street. For the first time, it will really attract external business. The whole idea is to draw people on to the grounds so it loses that sense of isolation."

In addition to its new buildings, the CAMH property is constructing streets to increase public accessibility, as well as a 179-unit assisted housing project, with 10 units set aside for CAMH-related residents.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Susan Pigott

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There's a poignancy to posthumous dedications. The satisfaction in remembering is mixed with the knowledge that the person being honoured isn't able to share in it.

That bittersweetness is heightened in the case of Edmond Place, an affordable housing development going up at Queen and Dowling. A luxury building with 12 apartments when it opened in 1913, it had been a 55-unit rooming house for 15 years by the time Edmond Yu, for whom it's now named, was evicted in 1996, just a couple of months before he was shot to death by police on a bus in the middle of a schizophrenic episode.

"We wanted the name of the place to be part of its goal," says Victor Willis, executive director of PARC (Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre), the organization that is developing the city-owned property, on which it holds a 50-year lease, "a place where someone like him wouldn't have been evicted."

At about 20,000 square feet, designed by Hilditch Architect to fit in behind the heritage fa�ade, Edmond Place will offer 29 affordable apartments to people with histories of mental health and addiction problems. Originally budgeted at $4 million, the budget expanded to $7 million when the extent of the destruction inside the old building, which had been damaged by fire in 1998, became clear. It's set for completion by the end of this year, with occupancy expected in January, 2011.

Still $300,000 short on its capital goal, Design Hope Toronto is holding an art auction to raise funds on April 16 (see a previous story on Yonge Street about Design Hope).

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Victor Willis

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Drywall is going up, the studwork's being done and the drilling for the geothermal system is about to begin on the refurbished seniors facility at 717 Broadview, just south of the Danforth.

The $10-million project, designed by Raw Design for Toronto Community Housing and Woodgreen Community Services, is about halfway done, with a December completion date scheduled.

"It's been a challenging project," says Raw principal Roland Rom Colthoff of the 1970s brutalist brick structure. "It was quite a well constructed building for the time. It wasn't great building science, but there was some good building."

Built as an institutional building, with rooms for seniors and shared facilities, including bathrooms, the new interior is being restructured to build 69 apartments out of the previous 200 rooms, adding a facility for Woodgreen programs on the ground floor and in the basement, as well as turning part of the parking lot in back of the building into a community garden.

Colthoff also expects the new design to deliver a 25%-40% reduction in energy consumption, in part due to the geothermal heating system.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Roland Rom Colthoff

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The Our Lady of Mercy patient care wing, an addition to the St. Joseph's Health Centre on the Queensway just west of Roncesvalles, has reached its fourth and top floor on its way to a 2012 completion.

"It's a redevelopment project that's been on the go for several years now,' says Sabrina Divell, chief of corporate communications for the hospital. "It's going to bring expanded healthcare services to the Toronto west-end community we serve, including minimally invasive surgical suites, and its going to expand our paediatric services, including more labour and delivery rooms."

When finished, the wing will add 130,000 square feet to the hospital, with 92 new beds and a three-storey underground parking structure that will be able to accommodate 300 cars.

The project, employing between 40 and 100 workers on site every day, is part of the province's $32.5-billion investment in health infrastructure, announced a year ago.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Sabrina Divell

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Part of what seems from the outside to be a perpetual expansion of Starbucksian proportions, Shoppers Drug Mart is opening a larger location in Port Credit, a relocation from a smaller store in a strip mall just east of the new Lakeshore and Pine location.

"What we're doing in many cases," says Tammy Smitham, Director of Communication and Corporate Affairs for the company, "is to take our smaller format stores that have potential to be large format, and put them into larger spaces, more than 14,000 square feet of selling space, which allows us to offer the latest in what Shoppers Drug Mart has become well known for."

In this case, the associate owner, Gus Falameh -- each Shoppers Drug Mart is individually owned -- will remain the owner of the larger space, which in addition to doubling the floor space will employ all its former employees and possibly add several more.

The full size of the new location, which had its distinctive red panels up as of last week, will be 17,500 square feet including storage and back rooms.

The store is due to open at the end of April.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Tammy Smitham

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To insiders, it's known as Store 1414, but to thousands of urbanites, it is one of the seals which, when broken, heralds the definitive passing of the old Queen West strip and the birth of a new sort of commercial concentration, built up to serve the area's increasing condo density.

Once a Caban, the two-storey building at the northeast corner of Queen and Beverly will soon be a Shoppers Drug Mart, and a rather large one at that. When added to the planned Rio Can big-box development at the southwest corner of Queen and Portland, the new 16,000 square foot superstore will give this strip, held dearer in the hearts of 40- and 50-somethings than by today's hipsters, a whole new look.

"We need about 17,000 people to ensure the success of a Shoppers Drug Mart," says Shoppers spokeswoman Tammy Smitham. "It's a great opportunity for us; that area has undergone some, I think, growth, particularly in terms of condo buildings in that area."

The two-storey shop, owned by Stacey Kwan, will also add a new post office to the neighbourhood.

The store is due to open by the end of the month.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Tammy Smitham

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The University of Toronto will get its first suburban medical training facility next year, a $37-million health sciences complex on the school's rapidly expanding Mississauga campus.

Built on a little less than half of an existing above-ground parking lot, the 5,960 square metre (60,000 square feet) building will house the Mississauga Academy of Medicine, which will be the academic base for 216 medical students while they complete their clinical training, mostly at the nearby Trillium Health Centre and Credit Valley Hospital.

The province contributed $15.6 million to the project, designed by Kongats Architects, which the university expects will reach full capacity by 2014.

"The St. George campus has limited ability to expand," says UTM's chief administrative officer, Paul Donoghue, explaining the decision to extend the university's medical faculty to what was for years considered a satellite campus, but which is now gaining a centrality of its own.

The building will also house the  biomedical communications program, which trains students to be medical illustrators and animators.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Paul Donoghue