New Windsor-Essex Acute Care Hospital (Windsor Regional Hospital, 9s, Stantec) (Windsor)

[ericmacm]

For over a decade now, Windsor Regional Hospital has been planning on constructing a brand new hospital to consolidate its operations in its aging Met and Ouellette hospitals. The property that was ultimately selected, a 60-acre parcel of land located at the southeast corner of the intersection of County Road 42 and Concession Road 9, had been incredibly controversial due to its location (outside of Windsor's currently developed area). It was the subject of widespread community backlash in older areas of Windsor, and was implicated in multiple lawsuits, including one by a property owner that believed their land should have been selected instead (for which they attempted to file an injunction to slow the project down), in addition to a local NIMBY group that were not satisfied with the location. The location was selected with the rationale of providing better access to residents living out in Essex County, which is growing significantly faster than Windsor proper. The land was formally able to be acquired in 2020 after one of the lawsuits was resolved, and the process finally moved into a more detailed planning phase in 2021. In March 2023, a preliminary design was presented during a virtual town hall that provided updated square footage, layouts, and future areas for expansion in comparison to what had previously been proposed. The project is estimated to cost $2B and the facility will occupy approximately 2 million square feet (up from originally planned 1.3 million square feet). The number of beds is still currently unclear, but they are all planned to be private beds. The hospital was originally planned to have 80% private beds, but after the pandemic, this was revised to being fully private. The original guidelines had set a criteria of approximately 500 beds, but this estimate has likely been revised upward due to changes in growth projections.

Post-development plans include converting Windsor Regional Hospital's Ouellette hospital, located in downtown Windsor, into an urgent care centre. The building is planned to receive significant renovations and will have increased space and new facilities, as the current hospital is a patchwork of multiple buildings with some sections being very old. The Met hospital, located in Walkerville area along Tecumseh Road, will most likely close and be demolished. The property is currently undergoing a site prep phase that will last approximately 12-18 months. The project is to go out to tender in 2025, with construction likely starting in 2026.

Here are the most recent plans for what the hospital will look like and how it will be laid out (apologies for the image quality, I had to screenshot them from the town hall video):

Older plans that show what the original concept for the new hospital looked like early in the planning process:

 

[ErieHall]

It should be noted that the new location is next to the airport, so that creates a hard limit on how high the hospital can be built. I think it seems kind of silly to have a new hospital that will be finishing construction in around 2030 be surrounded by surface parking lots, but I suppose it might make sense as a way of reserving space for future expansion.

The area around the hospital is currently undeveloped but it's also where Windsor is supposed to be building new housing (god forbid anybody builds quadplexes in the vicinity of a major college). The area towards the north is envisioned as business parks, while much of the rest of the "airport lands" will be industrial. But south of that is supposed to be residential, and even a few patches of "medium density" and "mixed use"!

I suspect/hope with current trends in urban planning the new neighbourhoods that are built around the hospital will end up being some of the densest in the city. At minimum probably a lot of stacked townhouses and optimistically a lot of quadplexes and some 5-over-1s. Which makes all the surface parking seem all the more silly.

Sandwich South Master Servicing Plan

 

[ericmacm]

It should be noted that the new location is next to the airport, so that creates a hard limit on how high the hospital can be built. I think it seems kind of silly to have a new hospital that will be finishing construction in around 2030 be surrounded by surface parking lots, but I suppose it might make sense as a way of reserving space for future expansion.

The area around the hospital is currently undeveloped but it's also where Windsor is supposed to be building new housing (god forbid anybody builds quadplexes in the vicinity of a major college). The area towards the north is envisioned as business parks, while much of the rest of the "airport lands" will be industrial. But south of that is supposed to be residential, and even a few patches of "medium density" and "mixed use"!

I suspect/hope with current trends in urban planning the new neighbourhoods that are built around the hospital will end up being some of the densest in the city. At minimum probably a lot of stacked townhouses and optimistically a lot of quadplexes and some 5-over-1s. Which makes all the surface parking seem all the more silly.

Sandwich South Master Servicing Plan

I’m confident that all the surface parking is just to reserve space for future expansion. It’s better to have it and not need it, especially given how much of a debacle it was to get the land for the new hospital in the first place.

The Sandwich South plans have always kind of confused me, but I think it makes sense that it will end up as one of the densest parts of Windsor, given how it is also one of the only remaining areas for greenfield development in the city.

 

[innsertnamehere]

I mean Windsor is probably the most spread out city in Ontario. Like Detroit across the river it’s a pretty solidly auto oriented place and I really don’t see that fundamentally changing in the coming decades.

 

[NorthshoreCity]

I mean Windsor is probably the most spread out city in Ontario. Like Detroit across the river it’s a pretty solidly auto oriented place and I really don’t see that fundamentally changing in the coming decades.

100% agreed - I grew up in Windsor and refused to buy a car as I didn't want to be part of the problem. That said, instead of a 20-30 minute drive to school, I'd be taking a 1.5 hour bus ride and sort of accepted that there was close to zero incentive for others to take transit except for those who were of lower income or are too young to drive/own a car. There's a real stigma around taking public transit in Windsor which also doesn't help as buying your first car is just part of the coming of age experience there. Given the location of this new hospital, it would take many areas of the city the same 1.5 hours I took to get to school to access it by public transit. Compared to the current locations, which might not be ideal, but are far more oriented towards transit accessibility.

 

[ericmacm]

100% agreed - I grew up in Windsor and refused to buy a car as I didn't want to be part of the problem. That said, instead of a 20-30 minute drive to school, I'd be taking a 1.5 hour bus ride and sort of accepted that there was close to zero incentive for others to take transit except for those who were of lower income or are too young to drive/own a car. There's a real stigma around taking public transit in Windsor which also doesn't help as buying your first car is just part of the coming of age experience there. Given the location of this new hospital, it would take many areas of the city the same 1.5 hours I took to get to school to access it by public transit. Compared to the current locations, which might not be ideal, but are far more oriented towards transit accessibility.

Windsor is a very difficult place to live without a car. When I went to university there, my friends who didn’t have cars, when not able to get a ride from somebody else, usually had to make a day out of any trip outside of the immediate area surrounding the university because the public transit is so bad. Want to go to Devonshire Mall or Walmart? The bus would take 1-2 hours each way. This is also the city that decided to shut transit down during COVID (as opposed to all other major cities) and is currently trying to fight the federal government’s housing accelerator plan. It has a has an incredible history of trying very hard to do the wrong things.

It’s a shame really. The city has great bones, and even went so far as to have early plans made for a number of BRT corridors pre-2008. It’s not something we’ll ever see in the near future though, not until the current group of people at city hall leaves or unless the province wants to get directly involved.