Category Archives: Hospitals and health care institutions

Toronto Rehab transforms University Centre with facility renewal, new 13-floor wing on Elm Street

Toronto Rehab’s new south wing on Elm Street, seen January 29 2011

Self Improvement: Staff and patients will be moving into the new south wing at TorontoRehab this month, now that construction is winding down on the 13-storey patient care and research facility.

Completion of the building, part of Toronto Rehab’s University Centre complex at the corner of University Avenue and Elm Street, is the most outwardly-visible component of an ambitious, multi-million-dollar plan to transform the institution into “an internationally recognized rehabilitation, research and teaching facility.” By renewing and redeveloping its patient care, research and education facilities, Toronto Rehab intends to “push the frontiers of rehabilitation science even further, so that we can make a real difference in the lives of the 4.4 million Canadians who live with disability” resulting from illness, injury or aging, its website explains. Total cost of the redevelopment project for the facility, which is publicly owned and controlled, is expected to exceed $180 million.

I have walked past Toronto Rehab countless times — it sits quietly on the west side of “hospital row,” directly south of the Mt. Sinai and Princess Margaret Hospitals, and right across the street from SickKids and Toronto General Hospitals. I’m familiar with all those other high-profile institutions, and have been inside each, but I have never once walked through the doors of Toronto Rehab and have never given the place much attention. Quite honestly, I didn’t know anything about what goes on inside its walls until I noticed that new walls were being built on the Elm Street portion of its property. (An old, four-floor south wing on the site was demolished to make way for construction.) That’s when Toronto Rehab piqued my curiosity, and I learned that it’s a leading institution in rehabilitation science, and operates the second-largest rehabilitation research program in North America.

A teaching hospital affiliated with the University of Toronto, it runs innovative inter-professional education programs to teach rehabilitation science to students from across all health disciplines. And it provides extensive rehabilitation care through wide-ranging in- and out-patient programs.

But Toronto Rehab wanted to do more, and do it better, so in 2008 it embarked on a four-year redevelopment plan that resulted in construction of the new south wing. In addition to the new, state-of-the-art rehabilitation hospital building, the redevelopment plan includes renovations to the existing 12-storey east and four-storey north wings, creation of dedicated education space for the students who receive clinical training at Toronto Rehab, and “creation of one of the world’s most advanced rehabilitation facilities.”

I’m willing to bet you didn’t know all of that before, either!

Further information is available on a special Toronto Rehab webpage describing full project details. Below are some of my pics tracking construction of the south wing since 2009.

Project sign outside Toronto Rehab building site April 17 2009

Excavation activity for hospital building extension on April 17 2009

Construction site viewed April 17 2009 from the corner of Elm and Murray Streets

March 9 2010 view from Elm Street of Mt. Sinai hospital (left) and construction progress at the new extension to Toronto Rehab

New south wing taking shape on March 9 2010

Facade exterior coming together on March 9 2010

Window installation viewed on March 9 2010

Toronto Rehab Elm Street facade November 2 2011

Simcoe Street view of Toronto Rehab’s new building on January 30

January 30 view of the windows on the new south wing

Toronto Rehab viewed from Elm Street, east of University Ave., on January 30

Keeping tabs on … SickKids Tower on Bay Street

Keeping tabs on … Women’s College Hospital

UHN to demolish former nursing residence and build “state of the art” lecture hall in its place

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January 14 2011 view of 90 Gerrard Street West. Originally a residence for nursing students, in recent years the building housed The Residence College Hotel.

Dormitory demolition: Toronto’s downtown hospital district will be getting another new building in the near future — a “state-of-the-art” lecture hall — once a tower that occupies the proposed 90 Gerrard Street West location has been demolished.

The University Health Network (UHN), which operates three downtown hospitals — Toronto Western on Bathurst Street, Princess Margaret on University Avenue and Toronto General on Elizabeth Street — once had a large lecture theatre at Toronto General. However, that facility was lost several years ago when the MaRS Centre was constructed at Toronto General along College Street. UHN has been languishing without an appropriate lecture centre ever since, but is now taking steps to remedy the situation by building an ultra-modern UHN Lecture Hall at the northeast corner of Elizabeth Street and Gerrard Street West.

The mid-rise, 19-storey concrete and glass building currently on the site is now being prepared for demolition. Originally constructed as a residence for nursing students, the building was recently known as The Residence College Hotel, which offered budget accommodations to hospital patients and other Toronto visitors.

In a newsletter announcement to staff last April, UHN president Bob Bell said UHN had applied to the city for a permit to demolish The Residence and replace it with the new lecture hall as well as green space. The city issued the demolition permit on June 1. The building’s windows subsequently were covered from the inside, while fencing and hoarding was installed on the outside of the property, so crews could prepare the structure for demolition.

The UHN Lecture Hall is being designed by Toronto’s Diamond + Schmitt Architects, which also designed the SickKids Research and Learning Tower that I profiled in TheTorontoBlog last week. So far, UHN has not made public any proposed designs for the new building. The lecture hall project is the fourth major building initiative currently underway in the hospital district. Besides the SickKids tower, there is ongoing building activity at nearby Mt. Sinai Hospital, where several new floors have been added to the top of the hospital, and at Toronto Rehab, where work is continuing on addition to that facility. Below are several photos taken last Friday of 90 Gerrard Street West.

SickKids Research & Learning Tower design details becoming evident in construction along Elm Street

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SickKids Research and Learning Tower taking shape along Elm Street

Artistic rendering of SickKids Research and Learning Tower

Beacon on Bay: Although foundation work is still below grade level along the Bay Street portion of its construction site, some design elements of the SickKids Research and Learning Tower are already obvious on the fast-progressing Elm Street section of the project — particularly a long, rectangular row of windows in what will be a patterned wall above Elm.

The $400 million facility will feature 750,000 square feet of space and 21 floors rising approximately 117 meters (383 feet). Sick Kids Hospital boasts that its new building, scheduled to open in 2013, will be not only “an architectural landmark,” but “a beacon in Toronto’s Discovery District and a magnet for the best and brightest child health professionals around the world.”

If the finished tower winds up looking like artistic renderings I’ve seen, it should be a beacon indeed — a bright, beautiful building that should drastically improve and enhance a rather unsightly stretch of Bay Street (the site itself used to be a parking lot).

I’m also fervently hoping that the tower will rise tall enough to block views of its next-door neighbour, the Enwave steam plant smokestack on Walton Street — especially views from the south, since the stack stands out like a sore thumb between the graceful curving towers of City Hall.

There’s a wealth of information about the Research and Learning Tower project, as well as renderings of the building interior, at the SickKids Foundation website.

The tower is a project of Toronto’s Diamond + Schmitt Architects. Below are several recent photos showing how far construction has progressed, as well as a rendering of the tower viewed from Bay Street.

SickKids tower construction viewed from Bay Street below Gerrard Street

SickKids tower construction viewed from Bay Street

SickKids tower construction progress at corner of Bay & Elm Streets

SickKids tower construction progress along Elm Street

Progress of foundation work for SickKids tower

SickKids tower construction progress along Elm Street

Artistic rendering of SickKids Research and Learning Tower

I’m hoping the SickKids tower will be high enough to block views of the Enwave steam plant smokestack between the towers of Toronto City Hall

Groundbreaking Women’s College Hospital busy breaking ground for new “Hospital of the Future”

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Innovative redevelopment:This is a big year for Women’s College Hospital (WCH), which is celebrating its 100th anniversary throughout 2011. But the hospital isn’t just looking back and proudly resting on its laurels — a full century of medical milestones and important achievements in all facets of women’s health care. It’s also looking forward, and kicking off construction of a new building that it proudly proclaims will be “The Hospital of the Future — a hospital designed to keep people out of hospital.”

The new facility, expected to launch in 2015, will give WCH a huge boost in capacity for its leading-edge urgent care services and ambulatory surgery. As the hospital explains on its website, “We’re providing the most advanced care for women living with the diseases and conditions that affect them throughout their lives — diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, mental illness, migraine and cancers. And we’re doing it all without overnight hospitalization.” That’s great news not only for women’s medical care, but also for neighbourhood rejuvenation, since the two-phase redevelopment project will drastically improve the appearance of an entire rather dreary-looking block in downtown Toronto.

WCH sits just east of the Ontario Legislature, bounded by Surrey Place and Grosvenor, Bay and Grenville Streets. (The Bay Street end of the block — once the Addison Cadillac dealership — is the site of the new Burano Condo tower currently under construction.) I’ve never liked the existing WCH complex which, in my view, has a hulking, bunker-like presence that isn’t the least bit friendly to the surrounding streets. In fact, WCB and its neighbours on the south side of Grenville Street — the Ontario Nurses’ Association headquarters and the former Archives of Ontario building — actually make Grenville a rather unpleasant street to walk along. The urgent care department entrance on Surrey Place is an ugly eyesore, and the hospital side of Grosvenor Street isn’t much better — its only saving grace was a tree-lined stretch alongside the low-rise Kenson apartment building that the hospital owned and has since demolished. But if artistic renderings are any indication, the new WCH building will vastly improve the neighbourhood and streetscape, especially since a landscaped, tree-filled park area is planned for the western end of the hospital property.

The five-year redevelopment project got underway last August when the hospital closed and then razed its multi-level parking garage next to Burano, along with the three-storey Kenson. Drilling and excavation work are presently underway. Below are several artistic renderings of what the new building will look like; they’re from a “building the hospital of the future” section of the WCH website that provided information about the redevelopment project. Also below are some photos I shot this week of the building site.