Updated - July 29 - 1:45pm
The “best” re-purposed use of Totem Lodge (next to Sechelt Hospital) is for Vancouver Coastal Health’s (VCH) mental health and substance abuse programming, VCH's director of planning and projects Sam Samsami said at a July 18 Sunshine Coast Regional Hospital District Board meeting.
A building assessment report completed after the building’s residential clients were moved to the newly opened Silverstone care facility earlier this year showed that “it has good life left in it," Samsami said.
Some upgrades are required and are to be completed while Totem is vacant, he said.
Whether the eventual shuffle of VCH mental health services and program spaces from portable units on the hospital grounds will free up the portables or the land they sit on is yet to be determined, according to Samsami. Their condition needs to be examined to determine if they “can still be used or if they need to be removed from the site."
Decisions pending on Shorncliffe’s future
The board was told the future of Shorncliffe, the other VCH intermediate care facility that had its residents relocated to the West Sechelt Silverstone site, is also unclear. The capital assessment on that property, Samsami said, showed that a move to re-purpose that location isn’t feasible at this point, as further investigative work is needed. Whether that structure can be reclaimed is a question and he said how the site will be re-used “will be evaluated as a component of the health vision process." (That process is currently under way, with details available on VCH’s website.)
Sechelt area director Darren Inkster raised concerns about the state of Shorncliffe, located in downtown Sechelt. “It appears completely abandoned,” he said, expressing concerns about further structural decline from encroaching trees and plantings.
Samsami responded that the building has been secured, there is ongoing maintenance, and the site is on VCH’s “radar” when it comes to steps needed to protect it.
Two 2025 cost-shared hospital capital projects identified
The board received VCH’s 2025 capital cost share projects for Sechelt Hospital at the meeting and referred those to staff for reports that are to come forward at the next meeting. Those asks included $871,000 for replacement of that facility’s dishwasher. The existing one dates back to the last major upgrade at the site in 2008. Along with replacing the dishwasher, the project will remove mould caused by water leaks around the old unit and upgrade the floor before adding the new heavier equipment.
Also requested is $750,000 for the local share of a hospital water resiliency project. That, Joham Morais of VCH said will look at how the facility can reduce water use and at the potential addition of infrastructure to handle storage of water delivered in the case of an emergency affecting supplies from the regional water system.
During 2023 meetings, board member and Elphinstone area director Donna McMahon requested that water conservation work be done, as the hospital is one of the major consumers of water supplied by the SCRD’s Chapman water system.
An earlier version of this article had attributed VCH's comments regarding Totem and Shorncliffe to Johan Marais. Coast Reporter apologizes for this error.
