St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton is a mental health and addiction hospital in Hamilton, Ontario that provides an integrated approach to education, research and clinical care. The facility houses 305 mental health and addiction inpatient beds, mental health and medical outpatient clinics, clinical support, administrative and facility support functions, and education and research space.

The project will involve the construction of a new 830,000 ft² hospital and is scheduled to take 36 months. The new centre will house an original program encompassing the full spectrum of mental health and addiction services, integrated bench to bedside research, education and specialized medical and diagnostic services. Services will be provided to St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton's catchment areas of Hamilton–Wentworth, Brant, Halton and Haldimand/Norfolk. Inpatient Forensic services will support the Central South Region, Halton, Waterloo, Wellington, Dufferin and Niagara.

Following occupancy of the new hospital, Plenary Health will be to demolish the 450,000 ft2 existing facilities on the eastern portion of the campus.

Project Facts

Plenary Group is the project sponsor, equity investor and financial arranger for the project.

Location: Hamilton, Ontario
Client: Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care / St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton
Size: 830,000 ft²
Value (NPV): $581 million
Builder: PCL Constructors Canada
Architect: Cannon Design
Services: Honeywell
Financial Close: December 2010
Completion Date: December 2013
Contract Terms: 33 years, Design-Build-Finance-Maintain
Awards: ReNew Canada Top 100 Projects 2011

Design Features

Green Features

The St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton project is targeting Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED®) Silver certification, highlights include:

Building materials with recycled and locally sourced product, and divert 90 per cent of construction waste from the landfill
New landscaping with native, drought resistant species
Reducing the facility's indoor water use by over 20 per cent through the use of highly efficient plumbing fixtures, including low-flush toilets, faucets and showers
Space for secure bicycle storage, shower facilities for staff, and public transportation routes in close proximity to the facility's front entrance
Minimal solar heat gain through a predominant east-west orientation, and a PVC roof to reduce the heat island effect
Limiting the amount of light pollution by designing the site lighting layout with no light spillage to adjacent properties

Brownfield redevelopment project

The St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton project is one of the first healthcare facilities in Ontario to be constructed on a brownfield site. This experience is extremely relevant as procuring authorities across Canada begin to look at AFP/PPP for major redevelopment/renovation projects, in addition to greenfield sites. Planning for the construction relied heavily on the partners' (Plenary and PCL) experience with the Bridgepoint Hospital project, which required similar considerations during the construction phase.

Innovations

The client had developed a clear vision of how it wished to combine its role of delivering clinical mental health services, research and education, and reduce the stigma of mental health in the community. While an indicative design had been developed, Plenary led a challenging of this initial design concept and created a design that was more compact, thus bringing key activities closer together, and brought the entire building to the edge of the road to reduce the institution feeling of the facility.

Plenary developed a financial solution that, for the first time in Canada, combined both short and long-term bonds. Appetite for the shorter tenor bonds drove down pricing and allowed access to an additional universe of investors, with appetite for construction risk, backed by a provincial entity.

Local Economic Impacts

The project will support the local economy by creating thousands of jobs. Labour for the construction of the project will largely be drawn from Hamilton and the Greater Toronto Area. At the peak of construction, it is estimated that 650 workers will be on site daily.

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