Facing a need for more modern, user-friendly buildings, the Royal Victoria Hospital is building a new hospital complex in Notre Dame de Grace, which it hopes to move into in 2013.
The move will leave the hospital's current buildings up for sale, and McGill University is already eyeing them as a potential solution to its space deficit.
The hospital currently occupies 13 buildings, the first of which was built in 1893. Together they make up 3.3 million square feet of reusable space, according to the Montreal Metro Board of Trade.
The hospital is both owned and operated by the McGill University Health Centre, which is a separate legal entity from the university. The MUHC first brought up the idea of moving in 1992, and made the decision after a study conducted in 2000 showed it would be more expensive to modernize existing facilities than to relocate.
When the university first heard of the hospital's plans to move, it was only interested in buying a few of the buildings, particularly those that could be easily adapted into residences, according to McGill Provost Anthony Masi.
Since then, Masi said, McGill University has undertaken a more extensive planning exercise for their Master Plan-the university's over-arching long-term future plan. The results indicated that they were going to need more space.
"While we still have some ability to rationalize the space we presently occupy on our downtown campus … estimates are that McGill will need nearly one million more square feet of floor space over the next decade or so," Masi said in an email to the Tribune.
The space would be used for graduate students, research facilities, temporary initiatives and "swing-space," which would serve as a temporary location for groups and activities displaced by renovation.
The university has yet to submit a bid for the properties, but, according to Masi, taking over existing buildings best suits McGill's needs.
"Most of our consultation on the downtown campus has indicated that the community would not like to see an intensification of the use or an increase in the density of the presently occupied spaces," Masi said.
2008 Woodie Awards
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