Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/292860
Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care by Yvan Marston courtesy cannon design A s you approach the site from the south, the concrete-clad complex with a tall, glass- enclosed entrance that connects a mod- ern, light-filled lobby to an adjacent 1870s granite blockhouse is typical of the kind of old-meets-new projects seen on university campuses across Ontario. The site itself, on the high ground over- looking Penetanguishene harbour, as one architect on the project opined, is a great spot for a four-star resort. If it wasn't for the triple row of electronically-monitored fencing that surrounds the 350,000-square-foot facility, it would be easy to mistake it for something other than what it is: the largest maximum security forensic mental health centre in the country. But inside and out, the building is characterized as residential in scale and size rather than being demonstra- bly high security, explains Dr. Brian Jones, a forensic psychologist and VP of Provincial Forensic Programs at Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care. The new 200-bed psychiatric hos- pital is looking to turn the page on its penal heritage by creating a space that looks and functions more like every other health care facility. It's a far cry from the 19th century corrections-inspired facility that, up until the spring, housed Ontario's most stigmatized patient population. "It was an environment that was completely inappropriate for the treatment of vulnerable men with serious mental health difficulties and it was decades out of alignment with the contemporary treatment standards in health care," says Dr. Jones. W hen t he prov ince's hospit a l restructuring commit tee set about divesting the government of hospital ownership in 1996 to 2000, conditions of that divestiture required that facili- ties meet certain codes, explains Dr. Jones. Typically that meant renovations, but in the case of the Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre, it required capital redevelopment. And that takes time. In 2004, Murphy Hilgers Architects Inc. (later acquired by Stantec Archi- tecture Ltd.) worked in joint venture with Moffat Kinoshita to create the master plan for the entire facility, which included building the new forensic facil- ity and demolishing the existing 160- bed Oak Ridge facility and the 20-bed Brebeuf facility. The new Waypoint building is the direct result of this mas- ter plan, and while its design follows closely the configuration proposed by Stantec, the project was built by a con- sortium under a DBFM arrangement. In 2010, Infrastructure Ontario awarded a contract to Integrated Team Solutions, the team selected to design, build, finance and maintain the new facilit y. ITS represents a joint ven- ture between EllisDon Corporation and Fengate Capital Management Ltd., with EllisDon also providing construc- tion services. The facility as it stands was designed by CannonDesign, and Honeywell Limited is charged with pro- viding facilities management. "One of the site challenges was to find a location that would not only link to two existing administrative and treatment buildings, but also provide maximum opportunity for exterior views from the bedroom units, while allowing enough space to create ample, accessible court- yards for each unit, on each level," says Dan Munteanu, a member of the Stantec project team. The problem was that the part of the site that was best suited to meet all these requirements had a 10-metre drop from the south to the north. "It was like building a facility into the side of a ski hill," says Carmine Provenzano, the project manager/architect for Cannon Design. Although it appears as a two-storey building from the east, the building is actually three storeys in some area of its west side. It is organized into three April 2014 /79 Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care p78-83_WaypointCentre.indd 79 14-04-03 9:14 AM