The MPP called it an early Christmas, the mayor called it a "monumental day," and the hospital president said it's an "extraordinary milestone."
The three local leaders were reacting to Ontario's Health Minister Sylvia Jones announcing from a podium in the Collingwood General and Marine Hospital's basement cafeteria Dec. 12 that the province was giving the hospital $95 million to help cover the costs of planning and designing a new hospital to be built on a new site.
"The new hospital will be built on a generously donated 32-acre site located on Poplar Sideroad," hospital president and chief executive officer Mike Lacroix said Thursday. "I love the fact that I can say that out loud, and it's coming to fruition today."
It has been a long time coming, with more than a decade of discussions and submissions from the hospital to the province's hospital redevelopment program.
The earliest submissions from the hospital to the province date back to 2010, but the first formal approval from the province, acknowledging they were considering a new or redeveloped hospital for Collingwood didn't come until the summer of 2021.
Since then, the hospital has been following the provincial application process, which changed at least once, to its most recent submission in June 2023. called a functional program proposal. It requested provincial support for building a new hospital on land off Poplar Sideroad that has been donated for the purpose.
Described as a data-backed wishlist, the document submitted to the province describes future services, activity volumes, staffing levels, new technologies and staffing requirements of a future hospital serving the South Georgian Bay region. It offers details on how every room in a new hospital would be used and where it should be located for efficiency and good service for patients and staff.
It's this submission that led Jones to Collingwood through a blizzard on Dec. 12 to confirm the province has bought into the plan for a new build on the land donated by John Di Poce.
The hospital has been offered acreage off Poplar Sideroad as part of the future regional health and wellness village proposed. Two years ago, the province approved a minister’s zoning order (MZO) to change the land-use zoning on the site and allow a mix of uses, including health care.
Jones didn't commit to a full budget for the hospital build, stating it would compromise the request for proposal and tendering process later, but did confirm the province supports the hospital's proposal of up to 132 inpatient, fully-private beds.
"I want to say this only happens because you have strong leadership, you have strong teams, you have a strong MPP and you have strong community advocates," said Jones.
Jones also didn't commit to a building timeline, saying instead that Collingwood and the other municipalities served by the hospital — Wasaga Beach, Clearview, Grey Highlands and The Blue Mountains — are "one step closer to getting a new hospital today."
Lacroix clarified that the tentative timeline the hospital is working with, based on information from Infrastructure Ontario, estimates shovels in the ground as early as the fall of 2028.
There is currently a request for proposal out to secure contracts for the planning, design and performance consultants on the project, confirmed Lacroix.
MPP Brian Saunderson wore a holiday tie for the announcement, expressing he chose it because "Christmas came early in Collingwood."
The provincial representative acknowledged the long history of Collingwood's quest for a new hospital, which spanned his municipal career as deputy mayor then mayor.
"This historic health care announcement is transformational for this community and for the surrounding area," said Saunderson.
Collingwood Mayor Yvonne Hamlin suggested "thank you" wasn't a sufficient response to the announcement, but offered it nonetheless and noted Premier Doug Ford's visit to Collingwood in March included a hospital tour and an unorchestrated but united plea of "we need a new hospital," from everyone he saw on the tour.
The announcement may be historic, and definitely has a long history. Jones was asked to explain why it's taken so long to get to this point.
"Well, some of it, frankly, was better understanding what a redevelopment on this site would look like as compared to a greenfield development, so that work had to happen," she said. "And then, of course, the local initiatives that talked about what do we actually need in this community."
She said the last decade-plus, was "time well spent."
In the meantime, the hospital remains in the Hume Street building, with construction underway on a new MRI suite, and other work being done to keep the hospital in use over the next several years.
Plans for the current building once the new one is finished are still up in the air.
"The good news is we have a good eight years or so to figure that out," said Lacroix.
The hospital is maintaining a website dedicated to the hospital redevelopment project, it's available at yourfuturehospital.com.
