Multibillion-dollar Mississauga Hospital project will likely be aided by ‘hundreds of millions’ from city
Published December 7, 2023 at 5:22 pm
The City of Mississauga’s financial contribution to the city’s new state-of-the-art hospital that will be the largest in Canada when completed years down the road is expected to be in the “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
But number crunchers at Mississauga city hall won’t have to worry about planning for that major cost item until late next year when working on the city’s 2025 budget.
While the specific cost of the new hospital being built on the same Hurontario Street/The Queensway site where the current health-care facility is located is not yet known, preliminary figures suggest to Mississauga city staff that the city’s portion will be significant.
During a somewhat related discussion on Wednesday at a special meeting of council, Ward 5 Coun. Carolyn Parrish asked staff if they could attach a dollar amount to Mississauga’s forthcoming required contribution to the massive hospital project.
“We don’t have a specific number,” began City Manager Shari Lichterman in response to the councillor’s question. “But when you do the math of the local contribution against what we understand to be the capital cost, it’s a really large number, which would be offset somewhat by other community contributions as well.
“So, that’s why I don’t know exactly how much they’re going to ask that the city be part of the local contribution, but I mean we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.”
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Parrish said her sense is that “there’s tons of community groups that are raising money for the hospital. The amount for the hospital is going to be massive.”
The provincial government described the Mississauga Hospital undertaking as a “multibillion-dollar project” in an Infrastructure Ontario update earlier this year.
According to Trillium Health Partners, which runs Mississauga Hospital in addition to Credit Valley and Queensway (Etobicoke) hospitals, the province will pick up about 90 per cent of the cost, leaving 10 per cent or so to be raised by the community (including the City of Mississauga).
The Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital, named for the local developer/philanthropist who early in 2022 gifted $105 million to the project, will rise to 24 storeys as it’s built over the next decade or so.
Construction will begin sometime in 2025. A completion date has not yet been set, but officials said earlier it’ll be about a decade down the road.
The massive project entered the development phase earlier this year. Hospital officials say the state-of-the-art hospital will be about 2.8 million square feet in size, nearly three times the size of the current structure.
Once the new hospital opens, THP officials say it will provide “more beds, shorter wait times and greater specialization closer to home for patients and their families.”
The new hospital will also provide doctors and staff with leading-edge equipment and resources needed to deliver exceptional care for the growing community, officials add.
Twenty-three cutting-edge operating rooms, up from the 14 older ORs currently in use, will be housed in the new facility.
Additionally, the emergency department will be one of the largest in Ontario and some 350 new beds will be added to bring the total to more than 950. More than 80 per cent of the beds will be in private rooms.
In advance of the new hospital construction, work began late in 2022 on construction of an eight-storey parking facility on the parcel of land that has housed the hospital since 1958.
The new hospital is badly needed, according to THP, which notes that over the next 20 years its three hospitals will experience more demand for services than any other hospital system in Ontario.
The current Mississauga Hospital is a major regional centre, according to THP, providing “a broad range of specialized, life-saving care including cardiac health, stroke, neurosurgery and more.
“Trillium Health Partners already cares for the largest population in the province and faces more growth in demand by 2041 than any other hospital, with the West GTA projected to grow from 2.2 million to 3.3 million residents.”
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