St Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton

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 new 830,000 ft² centre houses 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 are provided to St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton’s catchment areas of Hamilton–Wentworth, Brant, Halton and Haldimand/Norfolk. Inpatient Forensic services support the Central South Region, Halton, Waterloo, Wellington, Dufferin and Niagara.

Following occupancy of the new hospital, Plenary Health will be demolishing the 450,000 ft2 existing facilities on the eastern portion of the campus. The Project achieved Substantial Completion in December 2013 and opened in January 2014.

Design features

Green features

The St Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton project has achieved Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED®) Gold 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 challenged 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 supported the local economy by creating thousands of jobs. Labour for the construction of the project was largely drawn from Hamilton and the Greater Toronto Area. At the peak of construction, there was an estimated 650 workers on site daily.