the new St. Pauls

The new St. Paul’s Hospital and health campus will transform the future of health care   It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to build an innovative new hospital and health campus from the ground up – designed to better serve for people living in B.C. for the next 125 years.

Using pioneering design and next- generation technology, the new St. Paul’s Hospital will focus on treatment through teamwork with patients and their families, whether that means a virtual visit from the comfort of your home or a trip to the hospital. The new health campus will provide a seamless level of care – from primary and community to emergency – when and where you need it most.

It will continue to operate several world-renowned research programs and services, and St. Paul’s Hospital will remain a teaching hospital, training thousands of medical, nursing and health care students. Integration of care, teaching and research, with emphasis on new knowledge rapidly translated into patient care solutions, will continue to be the focus of its research centres and specialized programs.

The redevelopment of St. Paul’s Hospital is much more than just a hospital rebuild. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform the future of health care for people living in B.C.

The vision for the new St. Paul’s Hospital and health campus is to lead in the delivery of B.C.’s new model for health care by providing our patients with the highest quality, integrated, innovative and patient-centred care, where and when they need it most.

The new St. Paul’s Hospital will be a catalyst to realize the Ministry of Health’s vision for a new model of health care in B.C. that puts patients at the centre, integrates services across the continuum of care and shifts non-acute care from hospitals, bringing it closer to people in their communities.

Benefits of this integrated model of care are expected to include:

• Reduced wait times
• Better quality care
• Better health outcomes
• Better experience for patients and families
• Improved value for health-care dollars

The new St. Paul’s and health campus will continue its 125-year tradition of helping the most vulnerable people in our communities: those with HIV/AIDS, those suffering from mental health, substance use and other complex urban health issues, the elderly and people with chronic illness, and critically ill people living in B.C. with heart, lung and kidney conditions.

It will have 548 modern, private inpatient rooms; which includes a net new 115 beds. The site will be home of several leading provincial programs and referral centres, including for heart and lung care, renal, eating disorders, and specialty surgeries and transplants.

It will offer a diverse and long list of general and specialized care, including: chronic disease management services; emergency and critical care; mental health and addictions’ beds and programs; ambulatory services and outpatient clinics; end-of-life care; Indigenous health; maternity; colorectal and gastrointestinal services; and community care and community outreach programs.

Designing the new hospital and health campus around improved patient experience and provider wellness our patients and providers will benefit from spaces that not only flow but are well laid out and incorporate healing design.

Elements that will improve experiences and optimize wellness include:

• Access to natural light & views
• Single patient rooms with space for family and support persons to stay overnight. Minimize infections and maximize privacy
• Seniors-friendly campus layout
• New technologies and state-of-the-art spaces, including digital way-finding to allow easy navigation around the campus, automated patient check-ins and online patient scheduling
• Outdoor and other spaces for wellness & rejuvenation
• Sacred spaces (All Nations Sacred Space, meditation spaces, chapel)
• Public art. Incorporating Indigenous perspectives into campus design.

The new St. Paul’s Hospital and health campus will be the most innovative approach to the delivery of patient-centred and integrated care.

Providence Health Care is a mission-driven organization guided by the principle How you want to be treated. Click here to see opportunities on the Project and at Providence.

For general inquiries, contact recruitment@providencehealth.bc.ca

St. Paul’s Hospital currently provides emergency services as well as the Rapid Access Addiction Clinic and Road to Recovery. These services will continue at the new St. Paul’s Hospital.

Launched in 2023, the Road to Recovery initiative supports clients at every phase of their wellness and recovery journey by coordinating seamless care, even if there are setbacks or relapses along the way.

The Road to Recovery services in operation today include 25 detox beds located at St. Paul’s Hospital, 20 transitional care beds for clients awaiting space in a treatment program or long-term housing, and the Road to Recovery Aftercare Team, which launched in Fall 2024, providing outreach aftercare in the community. The initiative is rolling out in steps, with additional treatment services to come soon. Intake for Road to Recovery is coordinated through Vancouver Coastal Health’s Access Central phone line at 1-866-658-1221. Acute beds at the current hospital will transition to the new St. Paul’s Hospital when it opens in 2027.

The short answer is, yes.  All the services and specialities currently at St. Paul’s Hospital will be moving to the new hospital.  It will continue to operate several world-renowned research programs and services, and St. Paul’s Hospital will remain a teaching hospital, training thousands of medical, nursing and health care students. Integration of care, teaching and research, with emphasis on new knowledge rapidly translated into patient care solutions, will continue to be the focus of its research centres and specialized programs.  One of the key principles of the new hospital is flexibility, so as the patients’ needs change, we will change to serve them.

The new St. Paul’s Hospital will be LEED Gold certified.  Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a holistic worldwide standard to create buildings that address climate change, are more resource-efficient, healthy and resilient.  Here’s a link to a Resiliency and Sustainability Fact Sheet with more details.

We’re building the new St. Paul’s Hospital and health campus to be sustainable and resilient. Built to withstand rising temperatures, extreme weather, earthquakes, and flooding to function as a post disaster health care and triage facility.

The facility will be built to withstand the estimated global sea level rise and storm surges predicted by the year 2100.  Critical mechanical, electrical and communications equipment will also be built above the five-metre flood construction level (FCL).

Here’s a link to a Resiliency and Sustainability Fact Sheet with more details.

The current site of St. Paul’s Hospital on Burrard Street is approximately 6.6 acres.  The new health campus on Station Street is 18.4 acres.  On that site will be the new St. Paul’s Hospital, the Clinical Support and Research Centre as well as potential future developments that may include an Indigenous Wellness Centre, a hotel, or the opportunity to develop workforce housing.

The entire campus was rezoned at the same time during an extensive process with the City of Vancouver, however, the entire campus will not be built out at once.

There are currently no plans for a helipad at the new St. Paul’s Hospital upon opening. However, the roof’s structure on the hospital’s east tower is being built strong enough to accommodate a helipad. It makes sense to add this added strength when we build the hospital initially. It gives us the flexibility of adding a heliport in the future, but with less disruption and noise for patients and staff.

Providence Health Care has completed the sale of its property at the site of 1081 Burrard Street, the location of St. Paul’s Hospital, to Concord Pacific through a rigorous sale process to generate nearly $1 billion in total.

All of the proceeds from the sale will be invested back into health care and the new St. Paul’s Hospital at the Jim Pattison Medical Campus, significantly reducing the cost to taxpayers. This investment represents the largest non-governmental contribution to a capital health care project in BC, and likely, Canada. Learn more.

Vancouver Coastal Health and Providence Health Care are working collaboratively with people in the West End/Downtown so they continue to have access to health care services. This will be done through existing services, while expanding, enhancing and improving access to primary, home and community services.

VCH is working closely with Providence Health Care and the Vancouver Division of Family Practice to expand, enhance and improve access to these services over the next several years, with a particular focus on services for the frail elderly, the chronically ill and those struggling with mental health and substance use. Recent additions to the West End primary care network include the opening of a new Urgent Care Centre at 1290 Hornby Street and the expansion of the Three Bridges Community Health Centre at 1128 Hornby Street.

The hospital facility and operations will be coordinated with the latest municipal, provincial and national emergency management response plans. A hospital and health care campus at Station Street will be better able to cope with potential serious emergencies than the existing St. Paul’s. There will be purpose-built space to stage large emergency response, triaging and crowd management activities inside and outside of the hospital and health campus facilities.

The new St. Paul’s will be built on an undeveloped site (offers a degree of planning freedom rarely seen) near Station Street in Vancouver’s False Creek Flats. It’s bordered by Station Street, Prior Street, Trillium Park and National Avenue. Click here to see a map of the neighbourhood.

The Station Street site is the ideal location for the new integrated   health campus because it is:

• One of the largest undeveloped sites in Vancouver (18.4-acre site, roughly the size of 15 football fields), with enough space to accommodate the new buildings on the health campus still have room for future expansion as health care needs evolve
• A relatively short distance from the current St. Paul’s location on Burrard Street (about three kilometres away)
• Centrally located and highly accessible by major roads, public transit (SkyTrain and bus routes), bike routes and intercity bus and train
• Close to an area with increasing patient needs Planning process

The new St. Paul’s Hospital and health campus sits at the gateway to False Creek Flats, an area the city has specifically designated as a hub for health care, R&D, technology and education.

The City of Vancouver expects the number of jobs in the area will grow from 8,000 to 30,000 over the next 30 years. With that will come housing, arts and culture, and green spaces…the very definition of a transformation.

Consistent with all lands within the False Creek Flats area, all buildings on the Station Street site are required to meet the City of Vancouver flood construction level requirements.

The main floor will be located above the mandated datum level and all critical functions are placed at this level or higher. Typically, the logistics, parking and energy plant associated with an acute care hospital would be located underground. However, to ensure operation of the hospital in the case of flood, many elements required for core hospital function will be located above-grade based on best practices and lessons learned from the impacts of recent disasters such as Hurricane Sandy (New York, 2012) on local hospitals functioning post flood.

The required site preparation includes:

• Remediation/excavation of contaminated soil, soil stabilization and dewatering, both off site (under new roads) and on-site;
• Regrading to meet Flood Construction Level as determined by the City of Vancouver (i.e. raising the site grate by one metre);
• Relocation of existing storm services, and “hardening” of off-site services adjacent to the site;
• Construction of new roads (Malkin Avenue, Gore Street, National Avenue and Jackson Street).

Buildings on the site will also meet the most current seismic codes and earthquake-readiness standards in the world. Geotechnical and structural engineers working with Providence to conduct exploration and analysis are confident that the structural solutions developed will successfully integrate resiliency considerations to the site. The design will include rigorous application of engineers’ recommendations for site preparation, foundation and slab design, and seismic design. Some considerations for the site include:

• The core hospital will be located on the portion of the site that has the best geotechnical conditions to mitigate the impact of a seismic event. The current structural design takes advantage of the existing sloping, hard-soil conditions, using stepped underground parking to found the hospital on a solid base. The seismic demand at this site is similar to many others within Vancouver, as the buildings will be founded on glacial till.

• As part of the indicative design process the structural engineers are exploring state-of-the-art seismic systems which go beyond building code requirements and achieve resiliency and post-earthquake functionality for critical hospital operations after a major seismic event. Included in this exploration is base isolation, which is a method that has been successfully applied to limit the downtime in restoring functionality following an earthquake. The goal is to protect building contents and components, as well as limit injuries to occupants from falling debris.

Learn more by reading our Disaster Preparedness Fact Sheet.

The new St. Paul’s Hospital and health campus, along with other local hospitals and emergency responders, will be an important part of any disaster response. Our planning team is working closely with engineers, the City of Vancouver and BC Emergency Health Services to ensure that the new campus will continue to be functional, accessible and prepared during a disaster.

• Planning: The new St. Paul’s Hospital and health campus will continue to be a part of the coordinated municipal, provincial and national emergency management response plans.
• Capacity: The new campus will have an increased ability to respond to potential major disasters with more room inside and outside of the hospital to stage an emergency response, manage a large influx of patients and triage cases.
• Design: The new hospital and other campus facilities will be designed to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis/floods, in accordance with City of Vancouver Building Code and post-disaster building requirements.
• Access: The road network around the new St. Paul’s Hospital and health campus will include alternate routes to the emergency department in the event that any given street is impassable.

While the detailed landscaping design still needs to be finalized, Providence Health Care has committed to several public, park-like spaces to promote health, wellness, and community gatherings.  Those include:

• An Indigenous healing garden
• Sacred spaces
• Wellness Walkway
• Cycling trails
• Roof top garden, rain garden, green roofs
• Hundreds of new trees planted, with an emphasis on native species to help improve air quality, conserve water, preserve the soil, support wildlife and provide shade
• Civic plaza

Here’s a link to a Resiliency and Sustainability Fact Sheet with more details.

The northwest corner of Station Street is a different property that belongs to the developer, Keltic.  Please direct any questions regarding that parcel to www.kelticdevelopment.com.

There is room on the health care campus for possible expansion for the hospital, in the southeast corner of the hospital site.  There is also a possible expansion space for the CSRC, is in the north west corner.

National Avenue will be widened with a bike lane on either side and connect to a new road at the east side of the campus, which the City of Vancouver has named Nora Hendrix Way.  Nora Hendrix Way will be a public north/ south road with bike lanes between Trillium Park and the hospital and will be the main entrance for ambulances and the Emergency Department.  Nora Hendrix Way will connect to another new road (currently called Road A) that will be an extension of Dunlevy south of Prior Street.  Station Street will remain unchanged.  Gore Avenue will be extended south of Prior Street and become the main road for most motorists driving onto the new health campus.  All of the intersections along Prior Street will have full traffic signals.

As you can see from the screen grab, Road A is the new dividing line between the new St. Paul’s Hospital and Health Campus and a different property, owned by developer, Strand.  That developer is currently in the process of applying for a redevelopment permit.  If that is granted, a part of the Strand property will become Road A as part of a land swap between the City of Vancouver, Providence Health Care and the developer, Strand.

PHC is upgrading Prior Street from the base of the viaduct east to Malkin.  The road will be widened to allow for bike lanes, a grass boulevard and new sidewalks.  The design of all upgraded roads is being directed by the City of Vancouver.

We will be working with BC Emergency Health Services to determine specific ambulance transportation routes for the new hospital. Possible routes into the emergency department may include the viaducts (for now) for ambulances entering from downtown, onto the new Road A, which also ties in with Malkin Avenue. Ambulances coming in from the south would enter on National Avenue and up the new local street. Ambulances coming from the East may take First Avenue and then down to Station Street. Click here to view the campus map.

As for sirens, paramedics use lights and sirens in urgent cases only. While we appreciate you may hear more siren-related noise once the new hospital opens, paramedics make every effort to minimize disruption to the public. The sirens are an auditory cue for those who may be visually impaired or not looking for the emergency lighting system and ensures the safety of patients, paramedics and the public. We have been working closely with BC Emergency Health Service as well as the City of Vancouver to minimize the noise around the new St. Paul’s Hospital, but also ensure patient safety is protected.

In spring/summer of 2016, the City of Vancouver commissioned a Social Impact Assessment (SIA) to understand the concerns and aspirations of neighbouring communities related to the new St. Paul’s. The process included an online questionnaire, group workshops, small focus group sessions and one-on-one interviews with local businesses, residents and community stakeholders place who live and work near the proposed site. Providence also provided the City with the detailed input gathered through our spring 2016 community forums. This information will be used by the City to inform the City’s Policy Statement for the Station Street site, including recommendations to minimize impacts and maximize benefits for the surrounding community. In November 2018 the City of Vancouver held a Public Open House as part of the City-led rezoning process for the Station Street site. Open House visitors provided written suggestions, concerns and questions – feedback that the City utilized to approve the rezoning of the site in the fall of 2019.

• Providence is committed to engaging with patients and their families, local Nations of this territory and Indigenous community partners, community organizations, care providers and with our key planning partners (VCH and the City of Vancouver).
• Providence is actively engaging and seeking feedback from patients, communities, cultural groups, care providers, local Nations of this territory and Indigenous community partners and groups, and other key stakeholders to help us shape the new St. Paul’s.
• In 2016, we held eight community forums, conducted an online survey and met with dozens of community stakeholders on the redevelopment project. Participants in the meetings, forums and survey included direct service provider organizations, community advocates, special interest groups, front-line care providers, local Nations of this territory and Indigenous community partners, business owners, elected officials and local residents, including from Vancouver’s West End/Downtown and Downtown Eastside/Strathcona/False Creek communities.
• Engaging with frontline care providers, researchers, support staff and our partner organizations, is also an important part of our planning. To date, more than 400 meetings have been held with internal stakeholders to ensure that their expertise and advice is considered in every aspect our planning from start to finish.

We’ve been on this journey for at least five years and we’ve had a lot of input from patients and families thus far and will continue to partner with patients and families to complete the design of the hospital.  If you’re interested in learning more about becoming a patient and family partner, please contact thenewstpauls@providencehealth.bc.ca for more information.

All work is being planned during allowable City bylaw regulations. The City of Vancouver states that Construction on private property must be carried out between 7:30am and 8pm on any weekday that is not a holiday, and between 10am to 8pm on any Saturday that is not a holiday. Construction is not permitted on Sundays. Construction hours are subject to change with the approval by the City of Vancouver on a case-by-case basis.

Safety policies and legislation require that back up alarms be used on certain types of vehicles. It is worth noting that PCL is setting up their site logistics with as much one-way flow traffic management as possible to help mitigate backup requirements. PCL has also worked with WorkSafe BC to develop an acceptable solution to equipment that must use back up alarms by substituting white-noise back up alarms to reduce the number of normal back up alarms.

PCL plans to have onsite parking capabilities for some of their workers and they are also looking at securing some other parking lots in the area. Workers will be strongly discouraged from parking on any nearby streets and will be encouraged to use SkyTrain, bus, cycle or walk. PCL is also looking into shuttling staff to and from the site. Street parking won’t be affected for customers visiting local businesses.

As the site is large, a portion of workers will park onsite. But PCL will also be looking at parking lots around the area and will be retaining some of those lots as well. PCL will discourage any street parking by our workers and instead encourage them to park onsite or use public transit, cycle, or walk. Any workers violating the City parking by-laws will be subject to towing and fines.

The City of Vancouver has a plan to calm Prior Street and PCL is working with the City to come up with acceptable truck routes that take this into consideration during construction.  When the hospital is open, there are several routes onto the campus that are better alternatives than Prior Street, including an extension of Gore Avenue to access the main hospital.

All work is being planned during allowable City bylaw regulations. The City of Vancouver states that Construction on private property must be carried out between 7:30am and 8pm on any weekday that is not a holiday, and between 10am to 8pm on any Saturday that is not a holiday. Construction is not permitted on Sundays. Construction hours are subject to change with the approval by the City of Vancouver on a case-by-case basis.

PCL is taking efforts to ensure the neighbourhood endures the least amount of impact. PCL is setting up truck routes to control the flow of traffic to minimize the use of back up alarms. PCL takes considerable efforts to reduce the sounds of construction as much as possible and proactively monitors sound levels, through automatic sensor monitors on the site, to ensure that we are working within the acceptable noise levels.

For dust, PCL are using mud mats and a wheel wash, which prevent dust from spreading in the air and to keep any dirt onsite and off the public roads. Gravel will also be placed in areas to prevent mud, and the gravel will be sprayed with water when required, to prevent dust. PCL will also stage, clean and queue trucks on site, not on public roads. PCL is also street sweeping as needed in the local area within the allowable City bylaw regulations.

PCL is required by the City of Vancouver to keep the City streets clean from construction debris, dust and mud that may transfer from the construction site to the roads. PCL’s trade partner will clean and vac sweep the streets when required between the hours of 8:00am-5:30pm Monday to Friday and 10:00am-5:00pm Saturdays. As excavation approaches completion, the use of the sweeper will occur less frequently.

Construction for the new hospital is expected to complete in 2026. To get the latest construction updates, subscribe to our newsletter or check our Construction Updates page.

PCL builds the places where life happens and find camaraderie in the process. PCL is a community of builders committed to building better communities. That’s why PCL is always looking ahead, and not just to the next project or what’s next in the industry.

PCL is looking at what’s next for you and how PCL can help you build a career you’re proud of. PCL are seeking experienced Carpenter Apprentices located in the Vancouver Area, British Columbia.

To apply for this position email PCLbcjobs@pcl.com

Please use the Project Hotline at 604-335-2660 to leave message, and PCL Construction will respond within 24 hours.

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