B.C. approves $166M budget for construction of “long-overdue” acute care tower in Vancouver

PHOTO: Vancouver Coastal Health/Twitter

VANCOUVER—British Columbia’s Ministry of Health has approved construction of a $166 million six-storey acute care facility for Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver.

Paul Myers Tower, to be located on the site of the hospital’s former Activation Building — which was demolished in spring 2017 — will include 108 beds, eight operating rooms and a medical-device reprocessing department. A separate $26 million project to replace a 1961 power plant on the Lions Gate Hospital site is also underway.

“People on the North Shore are looking forward to this long-overdue acute care tower, and it’s great that shovels will go in the ground shortly,” said Bowinn Ma, MLA for North Vancouver-Lonsdale.

Funding will be provided through Vancouver Coastal Health and a fundraising campaign by Lions Gate Hospital Foundation. The campaign for the new facility has raised $92 million to date with a goal of raising $100 million (with $96 million available to contribute to the capital cost of the project).

With provincial approval of the project’s budget and scope, it can now move to the procurement phase.