Brampton healthcare - leveraging opportunities

NRU
Feb. 15, 2017
By Andrwe Cohrs

Soon after its opening, a new medical centre in Brampton appears to be anchoring a healthcare employment cluster, and local developers are realizing its potential.

“Certainly around Peel Memorial the excitement, the energy and the investment interest is starting to peak,” Brampton mayor Linda Jeffries told NRU.

Cumberland Developments has revised its original application to include the reuse of an office building rather than its conversion into residential uses. Its initial proposal was to construct 182 dwelling units in a new 21-storey residential building and a converted fivestorey office building. But prior to the city’s review of its application, Cumberland revised it to include construction of a 23-storey residential tower with 156 units, and renovation and expansion of the existing office building. Carried over from the original proposal is 975 m2 of atgrade retail uses. The planning and development committee subsequently recommended approval.

The revised application coincides with the opening of the Peel Memorial Centre for Integrated Health and Wellness last Wednesday.

Development services manager Bernie Steiger told NRU that the city would have supported the application in its original form, but prefers the most recent iteration.

“We were going to support it regardless. It was our preference that [Cumberland] retain the office [uses].”

Economic development and culture expeditor Paul Aldunate agrees. He told NRU that the city is happy to see a revised proposal that includes retaining and expanding the existing office space. In fact, to promote development around the hospital the city has retained MDB Insight to conduct a market and economic development opportunity study of the surrounding area.

“It’s a big win. We want to keep these employment uses where we can” Aldunate said. “Basically the idea there is to try to leverage the hospital as much as we can and hopefully that can lead to more development in the surrounding area, not only in residents but jobs... Ideally,

if we can create a cluster of human, health and life science uses within that area, that would be great... I think [Cumberland] caught on to the momentum and they got the idea of what we were trying to do for the area.”

Aldunate said that the area is already gaining momentum, noting that another development proposal for a six-storey medical building at 241 Queen Street East, by Atlas Healthcare, was also recommended for approval by the planning and development committee this week.

Ward 3 and 4 regional councillor Martin Medeiros told NRU that development around the new hospital dovetails with Brampton’s plan to implement rapid transit along Queen Street East and connect to a much sought after new university in Brampton. This will further unlock the area’s development potential.

“Not only is [the hospital] a healthcare necessity, we envision economic redevelopment in that area. What we are trying to attract is more of that sort of multiuse buildings, where you have residential and commercial uses...We are not sure where the university is going to go... If it goes in our downtown, then you have the Queen Street corridor connecting with the university, connecting with the hospital.”

MDB Insight’s economic development opportunity study is expected to be completed early this year.

Cumberland’s and Atlas Healthcare’s proposals will be considered by Brampton council at its meeting February 22.