ELECTION: McCallum wants new hospital near old Surrey city hall

SURREY — If Doug McCallum is voted in as the city’s next mayor, he wants to see a new hospital built on city-owned land near the old city hall.

In a release sent out Friday (Nov. 7), the former mayor said despite Surrey Memorial receiving upgrades in recent years, the current facility is still over capacity.

“The demand in the community has been there for a long time,” he said.

McCallum said a second hospital could be built on land around existing buildings, which currently houses the courts and police services. The province has also signed a lease to house Crown counsel and community corrections at the site, but have yet to move in.

According to McCallum there’s plenty of room around the existing buildings to construct a second hospital.

“Around the old city hall we have 15 acres and so we would leverage part of that 15 acres with the Ministry of Health to build a new hospital,” he said. “So we can use that as an enticement to say that we have some land here already available.”

At a previous police committee meeting, the idea of that land being used to further establish a "justice precinct" has also been suggested, but McCallum argued the land could accommodate both.

“The hospital doesn’t need 15 acres, you can build a hospital on seven acres if not smaller,” he said. “There’s lots of land out there to do any type of expansion and from the city’s point of view the priority for a hospital is far greater than expanding the other facilities and so forth. You wouldn’t believe how much the people in the community need a new hospital.”