REGINA - On Monday, dignitaries in Regina turned the sod to officially mark the start of the long-awaited construction of the Regina General Hospital parkade project.
Political leaders including Premier Scott Moe, Minister of Health Everett Hindley, Mayor Sandra Masters and several MLAs and cabinet ministers were on hand to officially put shovels in the sand for the estimated $35 million parkade project. Construction is expected to be done by Nov. 2024.
The parkade project has had its bumps over the past while, with a brief pause last summer while the proposed site was examined to look for any potential graves underneath.
Fortunately, no graves were found. With those issues out of the way, construction of the project is now on at the site located on the northwest side of the existing hospital parking lot.
The completed parkade is to feature 1,005 stalls, with 873 stalls in the parkade and 132 surface stalls. It will amount to a net increase of 686 parking stalls to what is currently there at the outdoor lot. Once completed, it should result in fewer worries in finding parking for both patients and staff.
Link Developments principal and consortium lead Carmen Lien spoke of what people can expect once the new parkade is built.
“We’ll have the most advanced parking management system to maximize the efficiency of the parkade for the staff here,” said Lien.
"Once this parkade is built, the utility of this parkade will far exceed any of the parkades in Regina. We’ve also incorporated a parking guidance system for visitors, so visitors are going to be able to quickly identify parking spaces so they’ll be able to get in and out of out of the parkade.“
This will include digital way-finding to point people to stalls that are available, and for lights located over top of the parking stalls that will light up red or green to identify whether those stalls are available or not, though all the details are yet to be finalized.
Every stall will be electrified for use in the winter, Also, for ease of access, the plan is for visitor parking to be on the ground floor and for staff parking to be on the upper floors.
Lien also said they are using new technologies in construction, using a precast system so that the majority of the pieces that will form the Parkade will be built off site and then shipped onto site and constructed.
“Once we actually have the site prepared, we’ll see a parkade in less than 55 days which is going to be incredible,” Lien said.
He said that process was chosen because they wanted to pay respect to the hospital patients in the neighbourhood. The pre-cast process is described as quicker and less disruptive to the neighbourhood, and they say it also reduces their risks during winter construction.
“Instead of having some trucks coming on and off the site, we’re going to be able to control the traffic, load the pieces that we are going to be requiring for that day, and have them leave the site once they’re out of use.”
Once the parkade project is complete, Platinum Parking will manage the facility.
There will be some disruption due to the limited parking on site during construction. Earlier this month, it was announced approximately 315 patient, visitor, and staff parking stalls were being relocated.
The plan is for remaining stalls at the hospital parking lot to be prioritized for the public; meanwhile, the plan is for staff to park offsite and take shuttles to and from the hospital.
“We are really pleased we have the park-and-ride option available for staff members,” said Andrew Will, CEO of Saskatchewan Health Authority. “We hope that will provide a good service to our staff and obviously the sooner the new facility is open, the better.”
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