It’s been a month since the Province held a groundbreaking ceremony for the new Cloverdale hospital, but now real shovels are in the ground.
Back on Sept. 12, the NDP government, with Surrey-Cloverdale MLA Mike Starchuk and B.C. Premier David Eby, held a photo-op as about a dozen politicians and dignitaries shovelled some dirt for the camera on the site at 180th and 55th Avenue.
EllisDon, the company building the hospital, had crews on site just under a month later as workers broke actual ground at the beginning of October.
Starchuk told the Cloverdale Reporter work crews have been doing testing for several weeks, but he was excited to see work progressing.
“I am ecstatic,” he said. “There are so many pieces to all of this and the next thing that will solidify everything is when the plans for the actual construction of the hospital and a regional cancer centre get themselves to city hall for the plan checkers to go through. That’s the next step.”
Scott Wheatley, executive director for the Cloverdale District Chamber of Commerce, said a photo-op groundbreaking is one thing, but seeing heavy equipment onsite is the real deal.
“Well, it’s truly just the beginning, but it’s an exciting time for Cloverdale,” Wheatley remarked. “Now we have to start working on the flow-through impact on the rest of the community.”
Wheatley expects a tonne of development to occur both around the hospital site and around Cloverdale. He said there’ll be more offices, more residential housing, and more people moving to the area.
Wheatley’s been meeting with property owners around the new site to encourage them to consider the impact the hospital will have on their properties—now that they are in what will become a new hospital district—when they are thinking about any future upgrades to their land and buildings.
SEE ALSO: Province breaks ground on new Cloverdale hospital
“This is an ideal opportunity for owners to put in all the support businesses and services around the hospital,” he added. “There will be a lot of work to do—a lot for the owners and a lot working with the city on zoning and all the rest of it.”
He said many owners are already looking at upgrading their buildings and transforming their sites to support the ancillary services a new hospital will need.
“Because it’s got a cancer centre, because there’s going to be a lot of specialists, there’s going to be a huge need for doctors to have space around the hospital.”
Wheatley thinks that “flow-through impact” will start to occur within two to four years.
“That’s when we’ll start to see significant change,” he added.
The Cloverdale hospital will add 168 more beds, which includes both medical and surgical beds and the new hospital will also have high acuity beds and medical oncology beds. There will also be an emergency department, the second for Surrey after SMH.
The hospital was originally expected to cost $1.66 billion, but that number has ballooned to $2.88 billion. The completion date for the project has been pushed back to 2029, from 2027, and it’s expected to open to the public in 2030. On Sept. 12, Ebay cited inflation and delays in companies’ abilities to get workers and materials to complete projects as factors in both.
“The ceremony at the groundbreaking is done,” noted Starchuk. “Now the real work of building a hospital and a regional cancer centre is taking place.”
