SUDBURY - The old hospital building on Paris Street needs to come down as quickly as possible, Mayor Paul Lefebvre said, with the ongoing risk to public safety it poses “unacceptable.”
“I think we’re all frustrated," he told local journalists at Tom Davies Square on Thursday afternoon during a media scrum his office organized to address the matter.
“The demolition has always been a priority, but now in discussions with the owner, that has been made top of their list.”
Lefebvre’s comments came off the heels of a busy week for emergency personnel at the long-vacant property, at which the body of a 24-year-old man was found on May 17 and a suspicious fire broke out during the evening of May 21.
City staff have been working for months with the property owners, Panoramic Properties, toward getting the site ready for development, but “following the timelines and regular course of business for a typical development project is no longer satisfactory for this site,” Lefebvre said in a media statement which pre-empted Thursday afternoon’s media scrum.
During the scrum, Lefebvre said he was in conversation with the developer that morning to urge them to tear down the structure as quickly as possible, and was assured that discussions with demolition contractors were already underway.
From a municipal perspective, Lefebvre said staff have been instructed to fast-track whatever bureaucracy is needed to get the demolition plan safely approved.
“These things take time,” he said. “Engineers, architects and lawyers all get involved to move this file forward, and we’ve had very productive talks with our staff to move this demolition forward."
The old hospital was sold to Panoramic Properties in 2010 and has remained vacant since.
After prior condominium plans fell through, the company shifted to their latest plan, consisting of three high-rise residential buildings consisting of 530 units total, which city council greenlit rezoning approvals for last year.
Throughout much of this time, the question of when the old hospital structure would be torn down has lingered, particularly after Panoramic Properties’ prior plans, which would have repurposed some of the existing structure, fell through.
The current plan would require the existing structures to be torn down.
In 2019, the Up Here festival saw Canada’s largest mural painted across its northern face — a colourful creation intended to be temporary, with festival organizers under the impression the building would be demolished the following year.
During his series of town hall-style meetings in 2023, Lefebvre relayed to journalists on Thursday, “At each corner of our great city, the old hospital topic came up.”
Last year, Panoramic Properties applied for $1.7 million in municipal grants toward the redevelopment of the Scotia Tower building in downtown Sudbury, which the company also owns. Per a successful split vote of city council, $1.7 million will only be delivered in the event the 83-unit residential complex at the Scotia Tower building is fully realized and the old hospital is torn down.
As evidenced by reports that people were seen fleeing the old hospital just before Wednesday night’s fire, the discovery of a body on May 17, someone placing a golden beaver (or possibly a rat) on the building’s roof in 2022 and videos online of people touring the vacant building, the property has been an ongoing destination for trespassers.
“People trespass, even though it’s gated and there is fencing, people still trespass," Lefebvre said, adding that although the property owner has been doing what they can to prevent this safety concern, it’s evident the building needs to come down “as quickly as we can.”
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.