Parking lot or heat island? New plans for future Vaudreuil hospital creating controversy

Local leaders in Vaudreuil-Dorion are shocked, surprised and even angered over a change in plans for the long-awaited future hospital.

What is being billed as the hospital of the future in Vaudreuil-Dorion will now feature what some are arguing is parking from the past.

“For me, it’s amazing, it’s a nonsense,” said Vaudreuil-Dorion Mayor Guy Pilon.

The area’s long-awaited hospital was supposed to have underground or multi-storey parking when first conceived.

But now the government is replacing it with a ground-level asphalt parking lot — or, as Pilon calls it, a heat island and an irony, as the government recently announced cities must reduce heat islands in their territories as part of a climate plan they must conceive by 2026.

“When I see that, I’m really, really angry. Angry. It’s a nonsense,” Pilon said.

The new parking lot will take up about 5.7 hectares of space and house more than 1,800 parking spots.

Marie-Claude Nichols, Vaudreuil-Soulanges MNA, says that’s the equivalent of five football fields.

“It’s gonna be terrible for us and also the direction de Santé publique from Quebec also saying the same thing as us,” Nichols said, adding there’s also no social acceptability.