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Brampton TMU Medical School (TMU/City of Brampton renovation)

ShonTron

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Earlier today, Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson), the Province of Ontario, and the City of Brampton announced the location of the new med school: the civic centre at 150 Central Park Drive.

The building was developed as the Township of Chinguacousy Civic Centre just before amalgamation with Brampton in 1974. It currently contains the largest of the Brampton Library’s branches, the Lester B. Pearson Theatre, and non-profit and civic offices. It was also Brampton City Hall until 1990. The library will have to move for renovations to be completed by 2025.

As TMU will partner with William Osler Health Centre for the new med school, the site makes sense, with good transit and being in between the Brampton Civic, Etobicoke General and Peel Memorial sites.


 
A bunker in a mall parking lot...........LOL Oh well, we need a new medical school. Doesn't exactly scream prestige but what can you do?

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A bunker in a mall parking lot...........LOL Oh well, we need a new medical school. Doesn't exactly scream prestige but what can you do?

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It’s not in a parking lot, so much, there’s a major bus terminal on the other side, and the area is building upwards. But the Bramalea City Centre area feels a bit like a poor man’s MCC.
 
It’s not in a parking lot, so much, there’s a major bus terminal on the other side, and the area is building upwards. But the Bramalea City Centre area feels a bit like a poor man’s MCC.

Uhhhh, yeah, there's a transit terminal on one side, I agree..........but....

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There's definitely surface parking to the south, the south-west, the west, and the north-west. By surface area, definitely more parking around it than anything else.
 
Uhhhh, yeah, there's a transit terminal on one side, I agree..........but....

View attachment 452935

There's definitely surface parking to the south, the south-west, the west, and the north-west. By surface area, definitely more parking around it than anything else.

If you see a parking lot, I see redevelopment opportunity.
 
I wonder what the construction cost would be for a typical brand-new medical/institutional building...again this is TMU so they get a higher budget allocation.
 
I wonder what the construction cost would be for a typical brand-new medical/institutional building...again this is TMU so they get a higher budget allocation.

First, I think, but don't know, that this is Brampton's (the City) contribution to getting this campus, and I assume they have offered space instead of cash.

That's a budgetary consideration right there.

That said, I believe Brampton will merit a full university campus, I would prefer to see it in, or near downtown Brampton, and I would like to see a comprehensive plan that site a medical school or any other program logically in relation to campus (giving consideration to where any teaching hospitals affliated may be located.

Assuming, as I do, that Peel Memorial will likely be reconstructed as a full, main-line hospital for Brampton, I think a downtown campus location is still workable, though perhaps a medical school could straddle Queen between the hospital and main campus.

As it stands, I find the idea of a free-floating medical school where the balance of the University and its research functions are found dozens of km away in downtown Toronto peculiar to say the least.

I find it likewise problematic that York will probably base its medical school in Vaughan for the same, political reasons.

We ought to plan these thing rationally, as a coherent thought, no ad hoc to save money or curry votes.
 
First, I think, but don't know, that this is Brampton's (the City) contribution to getting this campus, and I assume they have offered space instead of cash.

That's a budgetary consideration right there.

That said, I believe Brampton will merit a full university campus, I would prefer to see it in, or near downtown Brampton, and I would like to see a comprehensive plan that site a medical school or any other program logically in relation to campus (giving consideration to where any teaching hospitals affliated may be located.

They're also offering $10 million towards the renovation costs as well. Ryerson/TMU was interested in Brampton as much as Brampton was interested in them, but I certainly agree that a full university campus should be going Downtown. That was the plan, after all. Brampton too has failed to launch the Centre for Innovation downtown fast enough, so it needs to pick up the pace.
 
It’s a solid building. I didn’t take any interior photos, but there’s lots of space. According to local councillor Pat Fortini, the city will continue to have access to the Lester B. Pearson Theatre (though it certainly would be handy for lectures) but the library will have to move. He suggested the old Peel Police station building site on the SE corner of Queen and Central Park Drive, but that will take several years to plan and build. Again, the old Sears store at BCC would make an okay interim site.

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They're also offering $10 million towards the renovation costs as well. Ryerson/TMU was interested in Brampton as much as Brampton was interested in them, but I certainly agree that a full university campus should be going Downtown. That was the plan, after all. Brampton too has failed to launch the Centre for Innovation downtown fast enough, so it needs to pick up the pace.
Pat Fortini did mention that TMU was interested in purchasing the building outright from the city. That would go a long way to a new Central Library nearby. IMO the province should be putting up more money to the infrastructure than forcing Brampton to juggle everything around for this opportunity.

The CFI is stuck without an anchor tenant when UofGH pulled out due to political deadlock last year. (hopefully the final chapter in Elaine Moore's Legacy) Now they're back to the drawing board. The Ford government allowed Markham/Milton to proceed with their net new University plans, Brampton should as well. I would like to see the TMU Cybersecurity University be that anchor tenant especially with their Successful Cybersecurity catalyst program that got Rogers, RBC and Herjavic group to invest into Downtown Brampton.
An 80 student medschool is great, however a dedicated cybersecurity facility is also a big deal especially with the talent pool being churned out of the city and the high demand, growth prospects for this industry in Canada. Brampton is primed for an increased footprint in the tech space.
Perhaps if nobody else shows up in 5 years Algoma could scale up to utilize the CFI space.. They already took over the Dominion building and CIBC and a few more units bordering Garden Square with 5,000 students this term.
 
Lots of political movement on the TMU Medschool. The deal is tasting bitter on costs being revealed to residents: Fortini was wrong about TMU buying the building, they are getting Bramalea Civic gifted to them at no cost + $20Million to refurbish for them.
Lester B Pearson Theatre will be rented out to the City by TMU with this new arrangement. Previously the city was collecting rent from tenants. The Library relocation will be out of taxpayers pocket.
These victories for the city are revealing a lot of shortchanging for residents.

Fortini is also changing his tune from the October debate video circulating where he gloated about taking credit for showing TMU Bramalea Civic as a potential site which some on council claim wasn't part of the proposed options.



From the Brampton Guardian:

There has been much fanfare since the provincial government announced Brampton as home for the first new medical school in Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in more than a century.
However, details about how much it will cost Brampton taxpayers have emerged since January, when Premier Doug Ford and Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) announced the Bramalea Civic Centre as site of the future med school.
In a news release on Jan. 27, the city said it will contribute $20 million for renovations to accommodate the school. That’s in addition to the $1 million planning grant council approved in 2021 for TMU, formerly Ryerson University.
The Bramalea Civic Centre is a city-owned property, but TMU won’t be a paying tenant.
Instead, at its March 1 regular meeting, council voted to declare approximately 6.3 acres of the roughly eight-acre property — including the Civic Centre building — as surplus land to be “gifted” to the university. The city has not revealed the estimated value of the Civic Centre or the land it sits on.

“We’re gifting the land and we’re gifting a community asset,” Wards 1 and 5 Coun. Rowena Santos told council, while raising several concerns about additional costs.
Santos compared Brampton’s investment in the medical school, which will have far fewer students, to what the City of Markham paid to bring a 4,200-student campus to that city.
She pointed out Markham contributed $25 million to build an entirely new building, while in addition to gifting TMU the Civic Centre, Brampton is contributing $20 million for renovations, a $1-million grant, and over $7.2 million to re-accommodate existing lease tenants and city services. The city must also relocate its Chinguacousy Library Branch at a still undetermined cost. The library underwent a $2 million renovation in 2017.

In addition to relocating leased tenants at the civic centre, the above-mentioned $7,275,000 budget amendment passed by council on March 1 also includes the cost to relocate a Service Brampton location, as well as some city-owned information technology infrastructure and security services. “Compared to Markham, they’re building new and we’re giving stuff away,” Santos told council.

“It was a surprise to me in terms of why that location was particularly chosen. Many on council had no idea that TMU was interested in that particular location. We were hoping to show them other locations. There was no council direction that was given to showcase the civic centre because that’s a community asset. We had a number of options,” she added in an interview.

The Lester B. Pearson Memorial Theatre is also located at the civic centre and was also recently renovated and reopened in 2018 as part of the city’s Cultural Master Plan.
City staff said part of the agreement with TMU includes keeping the theatre as is and maintaining it as a publicly available space that the city will now have to lease from the school. But Santos questioned how the future medical school’s activities will affect its availability and usage.

In a heated exchange during the March 1 council meeting, Santos accused Wards 7 and 8 Coun. Pat Fortini of offering the civic centre to TMU as a potential location without consulting the rest of council. Fortini, who did not respond to multiple interview requests, denied that allegation.

He also said TMU threatened to cancel the medical school if a space wasn’t promptly found and approved to meet the university’s planned September 2025 opening timeline, and added TMU chose the civic centre despite being given alternatives.
“I didn’t tell them to go the civic centre. I just brought them around the city. And thank God we got a medical school because it was coming to the last week (or) they were going to pick up and leave. Let’s be clear here, I didn’t force them to go there. My job was to show them around the city and I showed them quite a few locations,” he said.


 
Apparently, the Library is going to move to the ski chalet at Chinguacousy Park, into an awkward, much smaller space, with fewer amenities and poorer access for the surrounding neighbourhood.

I still wish the old Sears store at BCC was chosen as the interim site.

 
The Mayor and various Councillors don't want egg on their faces of a 3rd University plan leaving the city. "Do it now, think later."
This whole thing is idiotic when TMU is building their first Medschool from scratch with a 2025 opening date putting a gun to heads.
The Ski Chalet is grossly inadequate to house a Library especially for an area that's always been underserved compared to west of the 410.

This is just the tip of the iceberg with Howden Rec Centre being pushed out so Bram West can get priority on their project.


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