Demolition contract awarded

It will take several months to complete, but the $2.2-million demolition of Port Arthur General Hospital is scheduled to begin as early as next month.

Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre officials have confirmed the tender to tear down the decommissioned facility, shuttered in 2003, has been awarded to Taranis Contracting Group, but it will take extensive preparation work before the walls can start coming down.

"The timeline will go hopefully fairly quick, as far as starting the job. We anticipate seeing some action on the property over the next month. It’s probably about a six-month timeframe before the building is completely down and remediated and the site is (cleaned up)," said Scott Potts, the hospital’s senior vice-president of services and operations.

Before the building can be demolished, hazardous materials on site must first be removed, Potts added.

"We’ll be removing any asbestos, any other hazardous materials on site, all that remediation needs to be done first, before they start to take the building down," he said.

Built by T.J. Jones in the early 20th century, PAGH served the north side of the city for more than 90 years before being replaced seven years ago by the new regional hospital.

Potts said they will be using deferred capital dollars to cover the cost of the demolition, meaning it won’t impact the bottom line.

It will allow them to start thinking about future uses of the property. And while no firm ideas are yet in place, there are plenty of opportunities out there to revitalize that site.

"The building has been actually inoperative, cold and not heated for the last five or six years," Potts said. "It’s condition continues to deteriorate. There’s been some vandalism on the site as well. So actually removing the building gives us an opportunity to do something else productive with that site."

Just what that might be is still unknown, Potts said, adding they will explore a number of development possibilities to see what’s possible.

"We’re going to talk to some of the local developers and maybe some out-of-town developers and see what ideas people have, and look to see what the best solution might be," he said.

Though the reality of the situation wins out, Potts is a little sad to see Port Arthur General disappear from the Thunder Bay landscape.

"The building served a lot of patients, a lot of people in the community over the years. It is sad from that standpoint. The building served us well in the past, but it’s time to move on."