The following article was published in the Kingston Whig-Standard when news of the new medical campus was announced.
The Kingston Economic Development Corporation (KEDCO) announced on Tuesday that the Clermont Group has secured the acquisition rights of 14 acres of prime development land in Kingston’s east end to build an 80,000-square-foot medical campus.
The Clermont Group, along with a group of medical professionals, is planning to develop a 14-acre site in the St. Lawrence Business Park located on Hwy. 15. The development will not feature a large building but medical offices and other facilities built in a campus style.
"It’s a great opportunity for health-care professionals to own their own space," said Donna Gillespie, acting chief executive officer of KEDCO, in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
"There will be a wide variety of specialized health-care opportunities."
The campus development will offer medical professionals the opportunity to purchase their own building space within the medical campus.
"We are extremely excited about this new development and hope the medical professional community is as well," said Matthew Derbyshire, president of Clermont Group, in a statement. "Our vision for the medical campus is to create a hub for Kingston residents and the region to access specialized and ancillary care."
Services could include, Derbyshire said, specialist offices and consults, medical procedures, after-hours clinics, labs, a pharmacy and a restaurant.
The campus will be located on John Marks Avenue at Hwy. 15, just north of where some of the existing buildings are in the park.
Gillespie said the development will benefit the east-end business park and add to the existing businesses.
"It has been great to see the level of new development taking place in the city’s east side over the past five years, bringing a variety of new services and adding many new jobs," she said. "We are very pleased to see that further growth in the area is taking place, especially in the health-care sector, which furthers Kingston’s deserved reputation as a regional centre of excellence. Health care is a significant and growing sector for Kingston and this new medical campus brings great opportunity for non-emergency based services in private sector facilities."
In a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon, Derbyshire said the concept of a medical campus is in other communities, but a first for Kingston.
"At the end of the day, it’s going to be the doctors and other ancillary health-care services who will own the site at the time it’s done."
"It’s an exciting development for us, it’s more like a partnership (with the medical professionals)."
Derbyshire said it makes sense to have a variety of medical professionals clustered within walking distance of each other.
"It’ll be a series of buildings that will have these people being able to refer from one person to another all in the same campus."
Derbyshire said the east end has been under-serviced when it comes to medical facilities.
Construction of the medical campus is scheduled to begin early next year, said the release. The Clermont group, a locally owned real estate development company, located on Midland Avenue, is the contact for health-care professionals interested in purchasing opportunities at the campus.
