VGH Campus Broadway Plan Policy Update

We're all set eyes are visible great

Thank you. Good morning, Mayor and Council. My name is Dr. Vinay Dhingra. I'm a critical care physician and senior medical director at Vancouver Acute, which includes Vancouver General Hospital. Thank you for your time. This is an exciting day for us at VGH, really. There are four individuals who will be speaking this morning to the VCH application before you. I'll be speaking about the clinical imperative. Fernando Pica will be speaking to you about business demands. Don Kazian will speak about phased redevelopment approach. And Addie Price will speak to you about the importance of reconciliation and culturally safe spaces. I've spent more than 30 years caring for people at VGH. My deepest commitment is to ensuring people continue to receive safe, seamless, quality care as their needs evolve. Every day, I see the extraordinary commitment of our healthcare teams, but I also see the growing pressures they are under. Annually, VGH care teams see more than 93,000 emergency visits, half a million outpatient visits, and perform more than 21,000 surgeries. These numbers have grown and will continue to grow. Our regional population is grown by 18% by as early as 2035, and those over the age of 70 who need more medical care by 47% in that same period. Every day, our teams are managing the effects of emergency department crowding, inpatient shortages, aging infrastructure, and infrastructure resulting in patients being seen and cared for in hallways, delayed admissions, longer waits, stress and strain on both families as well as healthcare providers.

Supporting our vision for the future of VGH campus, this policy statement supports the kind of healthcare environment Vancouver residents need. Modern emergency care, better inpatient environments, clearer way finding, improved access, more resilient infrastructure and spaces that support patients, families and our staff. Our proposed campus redevelopment allows us to continue providing care throughout construction without losing beds or interrupting clinical services. We recognize the historical role of the Heather Pavilion and we're committed to a conservation management plan to honor that heritage. The Heather Pavilion, as you heard, has not provided patient care for more than 20 years and cannot be retrofitted or adapted to meet today's clinical standards. The other legacy that we carry with us is that of providing outstanding patient care. It's fundamental to the culture of Vancouver General Hospital. The ability for future generations of doctors, nurses, researchers, and healthcare professionals to provision that in facilities designed for modern medicine is a clinical imperative. Looking ahead, this policy gives Vancouver Coastal Health the ability to responsibly plan the next generation of healthcare infrastructure while maintaining uninterrupted care throughout its redevelopment. Mayor and Council, on behalf of the healthcare professionals, patients, and families, and generations who will depend on this hospital in the future, we respectfully ask for your support. Thank you, and I'll pass it on to my colleague, Fernando Pica.

Thank you, Doctor. Good morning, Mayor, Council. My name's Fernando Pica. I'm a Chief Financial Officer for Vancouver Coastal Health and also VP of infrastructure. As you heard in the intro, you got a good summary of our VGH campus and our policy statement in front of you. What I'd like to do today is just for you, highlight a few of our, what we think are salient points for the policy statement for our campus.

First, our campus is large and really complex. Many of you know it, we drive it every day. On any given day, depending on our patient census, BGH is on the top three largest campus in our country. It's BC's largest hospital site and the one of only two adult trauma centers. As you've seen our chopper fly to and from our hospital, it is the destination of some of the most complex patients in our province and one of the city's largest employers. Second, many of our buildings are quite dated. In particular, our Heller Pavilion dates back to 1903. Today it occupies almost 40% of our campus. As our doctor said, hasn't seen a patient or had any meaningful clinical activity in over 20 years.

Most of our buildings on our campus do not meet census standards, sorry, seismic standards. And they struggle to deal with the new demands of extreme heat and cold and the power supply that we must draw on that campus. We are also in need of Buildings that can better withstand the effects of wildfire, of smoke, of heavier rainfall, and poor air quality. Third, our campus has limited space to grow. The campus is landlocked, making it near impossible for us to meaningfully expand. The reality is that VGH cannot grow without creating open space. The proposed policy statement that Council has will facilitate these conditions for us. Lastly, an expanded campus and all the activity that it will bring, must be safe for those that travel to and from it every day. We have been and will continue to be an avid supporter of cycling for the many thousands of employees that cycle to and from work. It is why we are requesting that Council support relocation of the West 10th Avenue bike lane to bi-directional lanes on the north side of the street. We're also requesting that the final configuration, including possible conversion of West 10th Avenue to one-way vehicle traffic, be assessed through the full campus rezoning process, with the goal of making West 10th safer for everyone. This will provide a much safer environment for cyclists, given the increased vehicle traffic we will have on that street, as ambulances, supply trucks, patient and staff vehicles on the south side of West 10th will travel. Thank you for your consideration. Pass this on to our Don Casian. Thank you.

Thanks, Fernando. Good morning, Mayor and Council. My name is Don Casian, Principal of Casian Architecture and Interior Design and Planning. Today, I ask you to look beyond a single building, beyond a single block of land, and consider what the Vancouver General Hospital campus must become over the next century. I'm going to speak about three things very briefly. One is designing a world-class hospital campus, creating exceptional public spaces, and ensuring there's enough land to redevelop the campus while it continues caring for patients. One of the biggest misconceptions is that a hospital campus should be planned like a university campus, with buildings separated by generous lawns and open space. Modern hospitals simply do not work that way. Across the world, Acute care hospitals are becoming larger, taller, and more integrated because their physical form is driven by medicine and not by conventional urban development patterns.

A quaternary acute care hospital functions as one interconnected system. And because healthcare today depends on highly integrated clinical services, modern hospitals require exceptionally large floor plates. We measure them at football fields. Our second phase and third phase of this project are the size of two, three, four, five football fields. Hospitals also need healing landscapes where patients, families, staff, and neighbors benefit from gardens, walking routes, sunlight, and places for reflection. The challenge is creating those spaces while keeping the clinical heart of the hospital connected. That is exactly what this policy achieves. It replaces the idea of one large, isolated open space with a connected network of healing gardens, wellness walks, public plazas, and green spaces that will evolve as the campus evolves.

Over the past several years, we carefully tested many redevelopment scenarios while ensuring that the hospital could remain fully operational throughout construction. One conclusion became unavoidable, that the Heather Pavilion site is the key that unlocks the orderly phased redevelopment of the campus. It provides the opportunity to construct the future replacement for the Blackmoor Pavilion while the existing hospital continues operating. In turn, that preserves the space required to eventually replace the Jim Pattison Pavilions and allows each subsequent phase of redevelopment to proceed without interrupting patient care. As was mentioned, the Heather Pavilion cannot meet the demands of modern health care. Its layout and billing systems are functionally obsolete. The structure and form are impossible to retrofit for modern health care delivery. And it remains vulnerable to seismic risk, resulting in a retrofit that would be prohibitively expensive while still delivering a compromise below standard facility. This does make it one of the most difficult decisions, but ultimately necessary decision, a planning decision before you. The building is an important part of Vancouver General Hospital's history, and it deserves to be commemorated. The policy commits to exactly that through a comprehensive conservation management plan and meaningful commemoration.

Mayor and Council, hospitals exist for one purpose, to care for people. Every generation before us has adapted this campus to meet the healthcare needs of its time. And today it's our responsibility to ensure Vancouver General Hospital can continue adapting to meet healthcare needs for the next 100 years. This policy does provide that planning framework to make that possible. Thank you. And I'll hand over to my colleague, Addie Price.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. First of all, I'd be remiss if I didn't thank you for your commitment to reconciliation, as was evidenced by your land acknowledgement this morning and the beautiful artwork you have throughout your building. My name is Addie Price. I'm the Vice President for Indigenous Health at Vancouver Coastal Health. The Vancouver General Hospital, as you know, is located on the traditional ancestral and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and TTsleil-Waututh nations. As we plan the future of this campus, our responsibility extends beyond clinical capacity. We must also create a space where Indigenous patients, families, and communities feel respected, welcomed, and culturally safe. For too many Indigenous people, healthcare institutions have historically been associated with exclusion, discrimination, and trauma. At Vancouver Coastal Health, our responsibility is to acknowledge that history while creating spaces that better support healing for future generations. The physical environment matters. Buildings, public spaces, and the overall character of a campus all contribute to whether people feel safe seeking care. This redevelopment gives us an opportunity to create a healthcare environment that better reflects Indigenous values, supports healing, and strengthens relationships with the communities we serve. In that context, the Heather Pavilion deserves thoughtful consideration. While the building has historical significance, its institutional architectural expression also reinforces memories and experiences that some indigenous people associate with historical trauma at residential schools, my family included. Our responsibility is to acknowledge that history while creating spaces that better support healing for future generations. This policy provides the opportunity to respectfully commemorate the past, while creating a campus that reflects today's values of inclusion, reconciliation, and culturally safe care.

probably every possible option on the planet, including that one. And we tried different ways to move around it, with it, incorporate it. The first big issue was we need a couple thousand stall parkade underground. because we're very short of parking. And then when you realize the... So we can't go under it. When you realize the floor plates of modern health care are just jammed with technology that needs to change with big high ceiling heights to get service, all of this equipment, and then the changes that happen on an annual basis to move these facilities around inside... It's really, it just didn't work, basically.

There's quite a range of possibilities. St. Paul's Hospital, for example, has taken parts of some of their old buildings. Probably not to the extent that we will, but we can use portions of the building. because the granite is granite. It is stable. It just needs to be taken apart and reconstructed, as well as in the landscape. There's lots of ways to incorporate the building in the landscape, the towers, the granite. There's a great piece of signage across the entry of the Heather Pavilion that would be great to preserve as well. We're thinking inside the building or outside the new buildings that happen. But those are all, the next couple of months we'll be studying those possibilities. And actually we're pretty excited about it.

In the future future, once the Jim Patterson building comes down and gets reconstructed, emergency will come off at 12th. Okay. So, but that's... That'll be 20, 30 years from now. In the meantime, we're going to be adding a couple thousand cars onto 10th and Heather and 12th. And so there's lots of activity. Along 10th, we have many curb cuts to access arcades, as well as loading and supply chain stuff. So there's going to be a lot of activity. And during construction, we'll likely have to even move those bike lanes to the north side of the street anyways, because there's going to be lots of construction trucks for many, many years along 10th Avenue.

Yes, it is.

Correct.

In terms of financial contribution? Yes. Well, the cost isn't figured out yet. This will all be in the spirit of major construction going on and major budgets to do that. And safety is critical here.

I'm Shelley Fleck. I'm also representing Vancouver General Hospital in this file. I would like to add that we have consulted with EHS, VPD, our internal stakeholders, our emergency department. you know, users of the facility as well when it comes to the 10th Avenue bike lane and really have received some feedback what would work and what would not work. As a piece of this work, we also consulted with Lunt, who is a local transportation company here in Vancouver. We worked with them on what the possibilities might be to revise the 10th Avenue bike lane and then also the one-way or two-way traffic along there as well. So we are looking for some direction today from Council. to continue this conversation formally as we work over the next six months for the final rezoning obligation document that's gonna come before you in early 2027. We understand that it is a conversation and it is something we have to work through with Paul and Kent and our city colleagues, but it is something that we really do want the opportunity to have some earnest conversation around. We will also consult with cycling community as well. As Fernando indicated, we have an active cycling community at Vancouver Coastal. We are going to continue to support cycling. We will engage with our community.

Yes, we do.

Yes, it will.

No, to answer your question, no, we don't have a number. That is something that we would take under advisement as we're planning each building and starting to develop the campus. Child care, as you indicated, is very important to us as well. We have staff that work 24-7 and we are looking for a new model of child care that can provide that. spaces 24-7 as well, but that will be worked out as each building is developed.

That is something that we would want to pursue to see if it's something we could see happen.

That's all part of the planning that we've done with the buildings and the landscapes and the site work. It's a critical part of design, and so it will be incorporated.

Wellness Walk and other pedestrian walkways and areas are really about the people feeling really great as they move through the spaces. And so, yes, there's linearity to the pathways, but there's also landscaping, and there's pockets of landscaping, and there's places to sit or to... step aside and look at something, look at something commemorating the Hilla Pavilion, for example, or another place to sit in the sun and just relax and chill after hearing some bad news or good news. And so basically be animated all the way, not just a bunch of row of trees and away we go, but it has to be animated so that people feel something along the way and feel good about it.

Well, the pathway will be clear, and there's lots of space for that for people. If you're busy and you just want to go straight through, then you're going straight through. Yeah, okay. You have the option to pull aside and linger. Yeah. But it's definitely a go.

I just might add one little comment to that. You know, having worked there for a long time, I see lots of patients, families, but also staff in very intense times. And actually having areas like this to be able to get a breather, walk through, it is so healing, whether it's been a crisis that you've just heard or others. But for staff as well, it's very important.

Just a quick comment about that is what we really want to do today is get into setting a goal for with transportation planning that during the coming months, we actually study the entire situation for the future, not just today. and talk to all the stakeholders and involve everybody that's required and do a thorough analysis and study of everything. Okay, but it hasn't been done yet. We've done a lot of it. We have talked to people across the street. We've talked to many people, but we need a goal here is what we're looking for.

Fortunately, we do more than just hospitals in our practice across the country in the Middle East. And so our objective is to take the functionality, because basically health care is inside-out design. But the architecture around it, et cetera, can be whatever it needs to be, to be inspiring, to reflect VGH's values, the city's values. and to address the goals. So it can be anything we want it to be. It's not designed yet, but there's no reason it needs to be a machine with oil refinery stuff sticking out.

Yeah, so maybe I'll take that one. So what we are going to do in our design of new buildings is we will look to design them to be elder-friendly. There's a lot of best practice designs that really speak to creating spaces that are safe and healing for our geriatric population as well, knowing that, you know, we are a very busy campus, as you heard. We are going to create universal spaces. So if we get... more elderly people in a day than we accounted for in design, they can always go into another room that's equally designed the same way. So our approach to designing new buildings is going to be about universality and adaptability, and we will create design features that are elder-friendly in either the materials we use, the lighting we use, the colors we use, et cetera, and really look towards Don and his team to support us in that as we work with our stakeholders on that as well. I wanna talk about one fact that we are actually doing right now. is the emergency department. There's a way to certify for geriatric emergency sections of it. So we've actually got a clinical team that's doing that as we speak because that's very important.

We would have to move it. Because the unfortunate part, the Headland Pavilion is right in the middle of the future. And as I said, we have big floor plates that need to sit on top of that site.

Thank you, Councillor Klassen. Councillor Frye.

Thanks for the question. Kent McDougall, Special Projects Office. We don't have it in any detail. It is something we're aware of and putting forward in the policy is the potential of a tunnel connection. But that's more than just the Vancouver Coastal Health VGH itself as a landowner to make that connection. So it would involve other sites between the station. as well, potentially. So it's something we would continue to explore as an idea.

LAUREL AND WILLOW WITH THE GENERAL ALIGNMENTS OF THOSE STREETS AND STILL LEAVING LARGE CONTINGUOUS PARCELS AVAILABLE FOR HOSPITAL REDEVELOPMENT IS THE PATH PROPOSED IN THE POLICY. I THINK WE WOULD LOOK TO IMPROVE CONNECTIONS TO TRANSIT IN ANY WAY WE COULD, WHETHER THROUGH AN UNDERGROUND TUNNEL OR OTHER MEANS.

Great, thank you. Yeah, so we have direction from council to continue to plan for a future with bike lanes on Broadway. That wouldn't, like in terms of our analysis, that wouldn't replace the need for 10th Avenue. 10th Avenue has been a longstanding corridor even before it was a bikeway that was well used by people cycling. So what Broadway would do would be to provide an additional corridor for cycling and better access to the businesses and Broadway subway and things like that.

Thanks for the question. Ken McDougall, Special Projects Office. That is a good question. It's a topic of discussion that I think we're continuing to have, exactly how the mechanics, how these would be secured, how they are managed. VGH does have a desire to maintain ownership of many of these spaces, particularly the large interim spaces proposed, which allow for future redevelopment. in another generation, if you will. It allows a fallow field approach where they could contemplate what that next phase looks like into the future. So it is that next step of the conversation, I think, for us that would come forward with the rezoning application in 2027 would be details about how these spaces, their management, and how that would work.

We've started exploring. The detailed work is going to be done this fall prior to the actual rezoning in the new year. So a few more months of work to do.

Yeah, absolutely. And there's lots of great examples around the country, the continent. And so we're going to be exploring that with VGH and with our our partners at the city as well.

Yeah, thanks for the question. Like, conceptually, it's a difficult connection to make from the hospital to the station at Laurel and Broadway, just given the grades for people with mobility issues. So, like, conceptually, it's an idea we want to continue to explore and then look at how we might be able to connect that in with future hospital development and with the SkyTrain station, where funding would come from that's, you know, still very much available.

Yeah, in TransLink's Access for Everyone plan, they do locate expanding the night bus system to try to hit more of the region, connect people, particularly people who have off-hours jobs, to be able to kind of come and go. Somewhere like the hospital is really important for people to access kind of off-hours. So we continue to talk to TransLink about that.

Yeah, so 10th Avenue is one of our busiest bikeways within the city. It's kind of our major east-west connection through the center of the city. It connects in major employment centers with a lot of the rest of the city. So VGH itself and the City Hall Precinct. Central Broadway is just one of our biggest employment centers. So it really is a... critical routes and we saw that again even before it was a bikeway we saw a lot of people cycling on 10th avenue so we as part of the 10th avenue bikeway we are also trying to we agreed that we would be also trying to improve parallel corridors so 14th avenue we implemented the first phase of it at a similar time are going to continue to expand that out planning for bike lanes on broadway off Broadway routes, planning for improvements there. But just in terms of 10th Avenue, there's a lot of demand that the corridor serves really well.

Yes, we had a multi-phase engagement process, kind of three phases plus an additional phase where we hired an independent consultant to work with us and the Hospital of Vancouver Coastal Health and BC Cancer to kind of work through all of those issues. There are a ton of issues along the corridor, including, you know, obviously emergency access and loading on the corridor and cycling through the corridor on people with disabilities, mobility impairments. travelling across 10th Avenue. So it was a lot of engagement to land on the concept that's in place right now. So if we're considering something different, we'd also want to consider how we engage the various communities who would have an interest in this.

Not typically. Sometimes we will bring really tricky challenges to council. So a really important facility like a recent one would be Granville Connector where there were a lot of different options about how we could move forward with a lot of different trade-offs and interests. But, yeah, quite often we implement it based on council policy.

It was about $10 million, more or less.

Just ballpark, like we haven't done any design, but construction costs have gone up and we'd be having to essentially move the whole roadway over. There would be more tree impacts, you know, different impacts in terms of access to driveways and other streets and things. So there'd be a lot of work that we'd need to do to even get a really good ballpark of what the cost would be. But I expect it would be more than what we spent already, probably significantly more.

Yeah, I think that's a question we'd want to continue to talk to the hospital about. If we see an option that would improve safety on the corridor for everyone, we'd want to talk to them about that. We've seen a big safety improvement since we implemented the bike lanes. We saw transportation injuries drop by about 60% along the corridor, which was a great outcome. So in terms of city funding, unless we saw something that would dramatically reduce collisions, like I would struggle to invest a lot of city funding into a reconfiguration of 10th Avenue.

Sure, Ken McTugall, Special Projects Office. We're still very much dealing with the plan and not the rezoning, so this is probably a very high-level estimate, but based on the floor area proposed, it's in the $7 million to $9 million from a CAC, which for facilities like this, we pursue a nominal rate. There are high rates for residential developments that you would see. So it's in that range that we would estimate at this point, and it would come forward with the rezoning.

Correct.

BCH was involved in the original plan that was subsequently implemented. We got to a point where we could negotiate some of the things that were important to us. It was clear at the time that the bike lane was going in. There was no ability to push back on that it was going to be unidirectional. And I think one of the things we would like to point out, we are not asking that the bike lane move off of 10th completely. We understand. It's a busy bike thoroughfare. We simply want it moved off the south side of 10th where we have two entrances into Emerge. We have two loading docks. We have a very busy street coming off of Laurel that separates the Diamond Centre and the Research Pavilion with the Jim Pattison Pavilion. It's just a very busy avenue for bikes. And so what we're asking is that the south side bike lane be moved, and we moved to a bi-directional bike lane on 10th Avenue. What we landed up doing, getting back to your initial question, is when we did agree on the design that went in there, one of the things VGH was able to negotiate was more drop-off spaces in front of the eye care centre and more drop-off spaces around the corner from the eye care centre. We were able to get some additional short-term parking along 10th Avenue because, as we've talked previously, we have a lot of patients that are not going to take transit. They are not going to take their bike. They are going to drive. Dropping patients off in the emergency department, if I'm bringing someone there, I'm going to drop them off. Then I have to go find someplace to park because there isn't long-term parking there. So it's just a very busy, busy roadway. begin with and a busy cycling roadway so we just feel strongly that we need the south side bike lane moved to the north and we are willing to do the work that we have to do with our city colleagues to come up with the safest plan possible and we will engage the stakeholders Okay, so globally, we're probably, it's extremely rare to have a bike lane in front of an ambulance entrance. I think we're one of the only hospitals in the world, maybe a couple others, but we did a search. But it's very, very unusual to have bike lanes right in front of ambulances trying to come into hospitals.

Correct. And one of the things I think is a challenge for us is we aren't able to produce the data to show that it actually is still a dangerous bike lane. We had one of our senior VGH employees actually hit a cyclist. We had an ambulance three weeks ago where a cyclist ran into an ambulance coming out of the emergency department. So we just feel there's a safer option for the 10th Avenue bike lane. That's what we're asking.

We have not. We are looking for the opportunity to work with the city on what a safer option might be, at which time we will do full due diligence on that component as well.

Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me? Echo, echo, Charlie. I can hear you. Thank you. Okay, perfect. Okay.

Good afternoon Mayor and Council. My name is Andrea Bizayon and I'm an operations director at Vancouver General Hospital and a registered nurse by background. I am not a resident of Vancouver. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the Vancouver General Hospital campus rezoning plans from the lands of the Coast Salish people, the Musqueam, Squamish, and TTsleil-Waututh nations. As a longstanding employee of Vancouver General Hospital, I'd like to express my strong support for this application and the future vision it sets out for the campus. The proposed rezoning is essential to supporting the continued advancement of patient care through innovation, modernization, and the ability to recruit and retain highly skilled and diverse health care workforce. As health care delivery continues to evolve, it's critical that the physical environment of our hospital campus enables us to deliver safe, contemporary, and culturally responsive care for the communities we serve. I'm aware that some members of the community have advocated for the preservation of the Heather Pavilion due to its historical significance and its role in education and learning. As a graduate of the Vancouver General Hospital School of Nursing class of February 1987, I have deep personal and professional connections to the campus and completed many clinical rotations within the Heather Pavilion, including D8-9, A5, C5, and others. However, I can say with confidence that my most meaningful learning experiences were not defined by the building itself. They were shaped by the mentors who guided me, the teachers who challenged me, and more importantly, the patients and families who entrusted me with their care. It's these human connections rather than the bricks and mortar that form the true legacy of learning at BGH. As I continue my own journey in reconciliation, I believe it's important to thoroughly consider what our physical spaces represent. In this context, I support the removal of outdated infrastructure and the opportunity to replace it with facilities that more clearly acknowledge the complex histories of healthcare delivery, including the experiences of our Indigenous patients. New development should intentionally support Indigenous-led culturally safe and culturally responsive models of care while also advancing medical excellence and innovation. Replacing aging structures with purpose-built facilities that reflect these values is an important step towards reconciliation and towards creating a healthcare environment that's inclusive, respectful, and forward-thinking. Thank you again for the opportunity to provide input to this important initiative and for considering the perspectives of those that have dedicated their career to serving patients and the broader community at Vancouver General Hospital. Thank you.

Good morning, Mayor and Councillors. My name is Philip Sweeney. I am a resident of Vancouver. I am also an Operations Director for GF Strong and Ambulatory Care at VGH, working for Vancouver Coastal Health. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the Vancouver General Hospital's campus rezoning plan and the lands of the Coast Salish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish, and TTsleil-Waututh nations. As a longstanding employee of VGH, I would like to express my strong support for this application and for the future vision it sets out for the campus. I also believe that the proposed rezoning is essential for the ongoing advancement of patient care, allowing us to continue to innovate and modernize our services for decades to come. This work will further support our ability to recruit and retain our ever-growing, highly skilled, diverse healthcare team. It is crucial that the physical environment of our hospital campus facilitates public safety externally while continuing the evolution of providing culturally safe, contemporary, and responsive care for the communities we serve. I am speaking today about my experience, not as an operations director of VCH, but rather as an avid cyclist and commuter, having commuted to and from VGH by bike for the last 18 years, using Vancouver's usually excellent cycle pathway network. My concerns relate specifically to the cycle pathways along 10th Avenue, which run through the northern edge of the proposed rezoning plan. The section of 10th Avenue bike route from Oak to Heather is, to be frank, extremely dangerous and very scary. I actually avoid it at all costs. The current setup puts cyclists in harm's way seven times between Oak and Heather when you're heading east. The intersection at Laurel Street, two entrances to emergency, the loading bay for the Jim Patterson Pavilion, the loading bay exit and the thoroughfare for the Leon Blackmore Pavilion. and the parking lot between Blue Sun and the Old Heather Pavilion. These are all high-risk areas for cycle-versus-car or cycle-versus-pedestrian incidents. To highlight the magnitude of this issue, in addition to what we heard this morning, I have seen ambulances have to wait for cyclists to zip by before being able to enter the VGH emergency area ambulance bay. Westbound cyclists only has three potential issues in comparison. I am also a pedestrian who regularly crosses 10th Avenue to check in my programs on the north side of 10th Ave. It is just as dangerous. Cyclists, e-scooters, e-bikes are careening along the bike path, weaving in and out as they follow the path. For an analogy, it's like playing a real-life game of Frogger, trying to avoid all the vehicles, bikes, and scooters crossing 10th Avenue, only with no second chances. The buildings on the north side of 10th Avenue care for patients with vision impairment and arthritis. Many of these patients park in the VGH parkade on 12th Avenue, and then they walk over to their appointments. This population has difficulty navigating fast-moving objects and slow reaction times. So unfortunately, it's an accident waiting to happen. I strongly encourage the City of Vancouver to consider revising the 10th Avenue cycle route to put both of the east and west on the north side. Thank you very much for considering my input.

Excuse me. Too bad. I'll try not to get myself all choked up. I don't know why.

I'm being served by the mayor. Wonderful. My name's Anthony Norfolk. I live in Vancouver. I have, as my message to you all, which I hope you received, as you will gather, I have been involved in advocating for the Heather Pavilion for decades. But I think we need to start off with clearing up one misunderstanding. The Heather Pavilion is not designated. It is a portion, the original portion of the pavilion, the Fairview building, that is what has been designated. So when someone says that 40%, the Heather Pavilion takes up 40% of the site, of the VGH site, What are we talking about? What is 40% of what?

The staff report is correct in saying it's a portion of the Heather Pavilion. So let's start talking about the Fairview building. not the Heather Pavilion. So the Fairview building is not 40% of anything, let alone the fact that I suspect that 40% is wrong. Now, don't get me wrong. At the age of 84, I am a consumer of services from VGH, which I much appreciate. They are super. Absolutely. But I don't see why... the Fairview Pavilion, the Fairview building, has to go to achieve all that VGH would like to achieve. It is a minuscule portion of the site. Its value has been spoken to and passed on by previous council when designating it. That is rare. It's been through all the processes. And it may not have been used for care for a long time, but it is still occupied and used.

I did precipitate the production for the city quite a while ago of a report by Richard Henriquez that lists the uses to which that building can be put ancillary uses to the broader uses of the hospital.

There are, as someone this morning pointed out, there are examples where heritage buildings have been enclosed, enwrapped in larger buildings. There is absolutely no reason why the Fairview building cannot be treated in the same fashion.

And in fact, Vancouver Coastal Health itself commissioned a report in detail about restoring the building. Detailed report.

Because I certainly have Richard Henriquez's report here. You know, it's yay thick.

There is no real valid reason for destroying a designated building. I don't know that it's ever been done. demolishing a designated heritage building. So when I look at the report, I'm simply asking you not to consider the repeal of the designation bylaw. Just simply refrain from supporting this part of the council report. That's my request.

Speaker four is not on the line.

Hello, Mayor and Council. My name is Brianne, and I'm speaking today in support of the Vancouver General Hospital Campus Renewal Project. I'm also a member of the Vancouver Heritage Commission, although I'm speaking today in my personal capacity. BGH is one of the most important public institutions in our province. Every day it serves not only Vancouver residents, but patients from across BC, and this proposal establishes a thoughtful, long-term framework to modernize and renew the campus over the coming decades. As a member of the Vancouver Heritage Commission, I know we all bring different perspectives on how to best support our city. We share a commitment to preserving Vancouver's history while ensuring it continues to evolve to meet the needs of future generations. When this project was brought to the commission, I advocated in support of this proposal because I believe heritage conservation and responsible city building goes hand in hand. Heritage is about more than preserving individual buildings. It is about preserving the stories and places that have shaped our city. The Heather Pavilion has served Vancouver with distinction for more than a century and its legacy deserves to be recognized. But we also have to be honest about the reality of the building today. The Heather Pavilion has not been used for patient care for more than 20 years and VCH has determined that its floor plans, circulation systems, and mechanical infrastructure are functionally obsolete. It was built in 1906 for a completely different era of medicine. At some point, preserving a building for its own sake began

I believe our responsibility is to honor its history while ensuring VGH has a modern facility needed to save lives and provide patients and healthcare professionals with the standard of care they deserve. This proposal thoughtfully balances those objectives. It creates a pathway to replace modern aging healthcare infrastructure with modern facilities while improving accessibility, creating new open spaces, and strengthening climate resilience. The population is growing and health care demands are increasing, and facilities built decades ago need to be renewed to meet modern standards. This project does just that. The decision Council makes today will have an impact for generations, and I respectfully encourage Council to support this application. Thank you very much.

yeah hi my name is ellie klein i'm a resident of east vancouver i live near uh and bike through the develop the general area of vgh pretty regularly once or twice a week um i strongly support this uh this motion i think that plan to modernize and replace any of these uh facilities is definitely beneficial given the growing health care demands that our city faces as it grows and as the population generally is aging And I think the part that I am most interested in is just the general revitalization of the campus area. Now, one thing I would just kind of want to draw some emphasis to, I've heard this brought up already a few times today, but I just wanted to get my own experiences as a cyclist regularly biking through West 10th. My experience heading West, not much of a problem. You're on the North side of the street and you're not generally interfering with any of the access the emergency or hospital spaces. But when I'm biking east on the south side, I'm constantly worried about kind of like crashing into or hitting anybody who's coming in and out of the hospital emergency areas. The biggest problem being is because the bike... lane heads downhill from the east side. So you're catching a lot of speed coming from Oak and you are heading down in the first building that you pass by on the south on the south bike lane is the emergency building or the emergency entrance. as well as other buildings that come up later on, and lots of pedestrian crosswalks. And this just does not really create a conducive environment for cycling, and it makes it more dangerous for any of the hospital services, emergency vehicles, even just people who are maybe walking out of the hospital, nurses who are leaving for break. It's just a dangerous environment. And so I've heard a lot of people propose something that I do believe also is a very good solution, is a bidirectional bike lane on the north side of 10th. I think that this would be beneficial because there's less general vehicle traffic coming in and out of properties on the north side, and also it creates less directions people need to look in when you've got the vehicle traffic traveling on that street. I know whenever I get to any intersection on my bike, you've got cars that are looking one way for the cars on the other way. They're looking for bikes coming from two directions on two sides of the street. It's just incredibly confusing. And I go through the 10th Avenue bikeway all the way out to Kitsilano, all the way out to Commercial. There are many parts of this bike lane that are bidirectional, and they work where the bidirectional is on one side of the street. It works very effectively. It's much safer, and it's a much more conducive way to bike. And I think that if we are looking to revitalize this area, I think that... reshaping and redesigning the bike lane to be bi-directional on the north side should be the main priority but apart from that i agree and support this development thank you very much speaking number seven daniel and then good afternoon mayor and council my name is daniel i'm not a resident of vancouver i reside on the uel and i'm here today to speak in support of the vgh campus renewal proposal thank you for your time TGH is one of the most important healthcare facilities in BC. It serves not only Vancouver residents, but patients from across the province who require specialized and lifesaving care. At the same time, our population is growing and aging. The healthcare infrastructure we rely on today was built for a different era. If we want our healthcare system to continue meeting the needs of future generations, we need to invest in modern facilities now, other than waiting until buildings become inadequate. According to the staff report, FGH campus buildings and infrastructure are aging, with 80% of inpatient beds located in facilities built between 1953 and 1989. Major infrastructure projects require thoughtful planning, but delaying renewal will only make future challenges more difficult and more expensive to address. I encourage council to support this renewal proposal so this essential hospital can continue providing world-class care for decades to come. Thank you very much for your time.

excellent excellent thank you good afternoon mayor and council uh my name is neil wild i'm with the mount pleasant business improvement association i will do my best to be very very brief i'm here to speak in support of the amendments uh to the broadway plan with regards to the vancouver general hospital campus Sadly, I don't think it'll be the last time that we'll be looking for amendments to the Broadway plan. On the city's own website, Broadway plan states that the area can see up to 64,000 new residents and 45,000 additional jobs. We are in this area, and this area has already seen dramatic growth for the past decade. With that said, expanding services, especially in some of the aging facilities at VGH, seems only logical. The campus can only get as big as it can get because that's the size that it is. We do respect heritage aspects. We do respect them in our own neighbourhood, but I think sometimes the needs of the hospital and the greater community are going to outweigh that. With that said, we fully support this and look forward to seeing these changes over the next 40 years to help the community of Mount Pleasant. Thank you very much and have a great day.