The first phase of SickKids’ redevelopment project, known as Project Horizon, took off this week with the official groundbreaking ceremony for the Patient Support Centre (PSC), a 22-storey educational training and administrative tower.

Two more projects will follow, including the Peter Gilgan Family Patient Care Tower and renewals to other areas of the existing campus to support new and renovated outpatient clinics.

The Patient Support Centre will house SickKids Learning Institute, which supports more than 1,000 world-class trainees, students and learners annually, a Simulation Centre for hands-on teaching, bright, modern workspace for professionals, management and support staff, as well as a variety of collaboration and activity spaces accessible to all staff from across the campus.

The site of the new Patient Support Centre initially housed SickKids’ Elizabeth McMaster building – an eight-storey laboratory and administrative building that was built in 1987. For the greater part of this year, SickKids has been demolishing the Elizabeth McMaster building, working to reach ground level so they could begin this exciting new phase of redevelopment:

“Moments like these are not possible without the vision and support of our dedicated staff, government partners, donors and the community,” Dr. Ronald Cohn, president and CEO of SickKids, said in a press release. “As we build a new SickKids, we are defining a new approach to paediatric medicine using precision child health to diagnose and then treat our individual patients.”

Photo: In attendance were donors who contributed a minimum of $1 million – including the Peter Gilgan family, whose visionary gift of $100 million was announced in June.