New hospital could cost about $800 million

A new hospital in Kenora won’t be cheap to build.

At a town hall meeting Monday night at Seven Generations, the price tag was put at about $800 million.

Planning for the new hospital began back in 2017 with a signing ceremony, and a year later a business case was presented to the provincial government.

Vice-president of Operations and Capital Planning at Lake of the Woods District Hospital Alison Wesley-James says right now, they have a number of approvals from the Ministry of Health.

“The functional program has been approved, which defines the programs and services that will be in the hospital,” explained Wesley-James following the town hall meeting.

“It defines the size of the hospital and the size of each department. So, we will move ahead with design.”

Wesley-James adds there’s a lot of work to do before they can actually start designing the building.

“Depending on the approach that Infrastructure Ontario wants us to take, we’ll either sit down first and do some output specifications that inform the design, or we’ll have the architects right at the table and we’ll be mapping out the floor plans and getting right into that.”

Ideally, she says they would like to have shovels in the ground for the new hospital in three years.

The town hall was also told construction work on the new Wiigwas long term care home would begin first and include 160 beds.

Mayor Andrew Poirier represented the City of Kenora and says they will be a major partner is the development of the property, including services.

He says a new underwater line will have to be built from Kenora to Keewatin, and then from Keewatin over to the hospital site.

The cost of that project will be between 18 and 19 million dollars.

In all, there are 118 acres of land to build on and that includes the hospital, long term care home, a hostel, an emergency call center, housing and potentially a hotel.

A new website has been developed for the project, and more information can be found here