Sault College Centre for Health Sciences to open in 2025

Sault College’s new Centre for Health Sciences will open in the fall of 2025.

The college’s board of governors were given an update on the planned new centre at their regular monthly meeting held on Thursday.

The two-storey, 42,000-square foot new facility will replace the college’s old gymnasium and D-Wing at its Northern Avenue campus.

The college says that expanding its health programming is a major part of its strategic plan along with its Bachelor of Science in Nursing program. The college is planning to increase its enrolment of internationally trained nurses and is seeking to train more personal support workers and other healthcare workers.

“The schedule to date that we’ve identified is on track and will be completed in the summer of 2025,” said Trevor Rising, Sault College director of facilities management, addressing the board.

The college is continuing to work with groups that will be interested in the new facility.

“Right now we’re at the point where we’re engaging with user groups and trying to understand what these spaces will look like. We know what we need, we don’t know what they’ll look like yet, so we’re working with user groups with the architect to develop that,” Rising said of the planned new building.

Northern Ontario School of Medicine and Sault Area Hospital are looking for simulation spaces for training and the college is currently engaging with them, said Colin Kirkwood, Sault College vice president of operations.

Kirkwood told the board the centre could also be home to a new skin and wound care lab.

In formulating plans for the centre, college officials plan to tour other post-secondary institutions that have similar health sciences facilities, including Lambton College in Sarnia, St. Clair College in Windsor, George Brown College in Toronto and possibly Western University in London.

Local firm IDEA has produced renderings of how the building will appear once completed and Sault College is also working with BTY Group, a Canadian project management firm.

It is not yet known how much the new centre will cost to build.

“We haven’t set a budget yet. We’ll get the design development done then we’ll have a cost estimate and corresponding budget,” Rising told the board.

“We’ve been very good at bringing projects in on budget here on campus,” Rising said.

After coming up with a cost estimate, Sault College will seek capital project approval from its board of governors, fundraise and submit a funding application to the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation to bring the new building into being.