A preliminary plan for roads accessing the new Groves Memorial Hospital planned for a 30-acre site off Beatty Line was unveiled to county council on Jan. 31.
Dale Murray of Triton Engineering Services Ltd. made a short presentation to council on the Wellington Place roadway design that will service the hospital when it is built in 2016.
“We’re trying to get the tender out to maintain the schedule set by the province and the hospital,” Murray told council. “The hospital has not, at this point in time, adopted a layout of the hospital.”
The road design will also service land for future county plans in the area.
The preliminary design includes a tree-lined boulevard from Beatty Line to the hospital site, sewer and water work, bicycle and pedestrian walkways and a roundabout to handle delivery and emergency vehicles to the hospital.
“I like the idea of a landscaped boulevard,” councillor Shawn Watters said of the design plan.
Murray said his firm has yet to determine costs associated with the plan.
Ontario health minister Deb Matthews officially unveiled a sign at the site in December to give residents an indication of where the new hospital will be located and of fundraising efforts taking place in the community ($15 million raised to date).
No figures on what it will cost to build the hospital have been released. The hospital will receive 90 per cent of its construction funding from the province.
“This facility will be an important part of the health care system for Fergus-area residents and will mean faster and easier access to services much closer to home, in a new and modernized setting,” Matthews said at the December ceremony.
The current Groves hospital was constructed in 1953 with additions in 1965 and 1980 and today provides acute and non-acute care and complex continuing care. The hospital was founded in 1902 as the Alexandra Hospital.
In 1932 well-known Fergus physician Dr. Abraham Groves donated the facility to Fergus. The hospital was eventually re-named to honor the doctor, a well-known surgeon who pioneered the use of antiseptics and sterilization and was the first surgeon to perform an appendectomy in North America.
The road design tender is expected to coincide with hospital tender plans, with construction of the new hospital in expected to start in late 2014.
