Making way for Hope
With a roar of pulverizing concrete, wood and glass, the walls came down on the old Lions Gate Hospital Annex building Tuesday.
A single excavator tore down the two-storey building that formerly housed administration offices for both Vancouver Coastal Health and the University of B.C. medical school, while North Shore MLAs Naomi Yamamoto, Jane Thornthwaite, Ralph Sultan and Joan McIntyre looked on.
The demolition makes way for the construction of the new Greta and Robert H.N. Ho Psychiatry and Education Centre, also known as The HOpe Centre.
The old Annex building at the corner of St. Andrews Avenue and East 13th Street was home not only to admin offices but also to walls riddled with potentially toxic asbestos and a colony of rats, according to hospital staff.
The new four-storey, 150,000-square-foot HOpe Centre will provide both inpatient and outpatient mental health care services as well as an expanded UBC teaching centre and a new permanent home for BC Ambulance in North Vancouver.
In 2010, the provincial government announced it would give $38.2 million to build the new centre while the LGH Foundation’s contribution is now just shy of its $25-million fundraising goal.
Construction on the new centre is slated to begin by the fall of this year with completion expected by the end of 2013.
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