Royal Columbian Hospital is a pivotal piece of the Royal City’s economic future.
With 3,500 employees, Royal Columbian Hospital is the largest employer in New Westminster. In preparation for the long-awaited expansion of Royal Columbian Hospital, the City of New Westminster has been working on plans to create an economic health-care cluster in Sapperton, around the hospital.
“Fundamentally, we see the economic health-care cluster becoming the premier employment strategy for the city,” said Lisa Spitale, the city’s chief administrative officer. “We think that’s quite exciting.”
Spitale said the expansion plan for Royal Columbian Hospital would double the facility’s floor space and increase its staff by 70 per cent over 10 years.
“Our preliminary estimates show that the economic health-care cluster, anchored by RCH, will be the city’s top employment generator. At this time, one in four people in New Westminster work in the health-care and related sectors, and this number will increase with the hospital’s expansion,” she told the Record. “With an aging population, total health sector employment in B.C. is expected to grow two per cent per year over the next decade.”
Spitale said clusters are areas that have achieved a critical mass of expertise in a specific area, in this case, health care. In New Westminster, the cluster would be anchored around Royal Columbian Hospital.
“RCH is the city’s top employer with 3,500 employees. Many of these employees live in New Westminster. Initial analysis from the economic analysis suggest that the hospital currently injects over $275 million per year into the regional economy directly, through salaries and expenditures on supplies and services, with an additional $200 million spent on indirect and induced economic activities,” she said. “It is estimated that $66 million of these expenditures are made within the city annually. With a significant expansion on the hospital, it is expected that these expenditures will increase proportionately.”
Soon after the November 2014 civic election, Mayor Jonathan Cote struck a mayor’s task force on the economic health-care cluster, which is developing a strategy for this endeavour. The strategy’s goal is to diversify the city’s economy by transitioning and expanding the area around Royal Columbian Hospital from its current service delivery and unrelated commercial and industrial uses to an integrated, medical, technology and knowledge employment cluster in Sapperton.
Cote said New Westminster’s economy has changed in the past few decades as a result of the loss of traditional industries, so the health-care cluster is a “strategic” move by the city to focus on its strengths.
Cote said the Brewery District and future Sapperton Green developments are located along SkyTrain lines, which creates an ability to leverage opportunities with the existing Royal Columbian Hospital and an expanded facility. Along with those developments, he said there are synergies between the hospital expansion and other city initiatives, such as the development of a high-speed fibre option network, the Intelligent City strategy and a district energy system near the hospital.
According to Spitale, Boston, San Francisco, Montreal and Hamilton are among the cities that have created health-care clusters. Closer to home, a health-care cluster had been established in Vancouver that includes Vancouver General Hospital and University of B.C. life sciences services.
Last week, the province announced approval of a business plan for Phase 1 of the redevelopment of Royal Columbian Hospital. The $258.9 million budget for Phase 1 includes a 75-bed mental health and substance use facility and a dedicated geriatric psychiatry unit.
In preparation for creating an economic health-care cluster in Sapperton, the city is developing a master plan that will consider issues such as land use, transportation and parking needs and pedestrian access. The City of New Westminster is also doing an economic plan that will consider the importance of health care to the city’s economy, the goal of promoting Class A office space in New Westminster, the investment that’s taking place along SkyTrain lines and the ability to seize opportunities in the technology sector.
According to Spitale, more people are employed in the technology industry than the forestry, mining, oil and gas sectors combined. She said the economic health care cluster is a “foundational piece” in New West’s economic development strategy.
“New Westminster is land constrained. One of the benefits with these jobs is they are not land de-pendent,” she said. “That really gives us an opportunity to start looking at future employment. We have been constrained in the past because of our size.”
The City of New Westminster will also be doing a partnership plan, through which it will collaborate with government, major employers, institutions and investors to consider opportunities in the city as part of the economic health-care cluster.
In addition to the work of the task force, the economic health-care cluster is also one of six strategic priorities in New Westminster’s new city-wide economic plan. As part of its economic plan, the city has hired an economist to quantify the economic benefits derived from Royal Columbian hospital and to work with the task force and identify and maximize the city’s competitive advantages.
