Without allowing a word of public debate or input on Infrastructure Ontario’s $71-million plan to tear down 22 historic buildings on the former St. Thomas Psychiatric Hospital lands, Central Elgin council voted on April 13 to approve the official plan amendment (OPA) for the 168-hectare (416-acre) property.
The decision thwarted a Heritage Central Elgin (HCE) motion requesting Premier Doug Ford, Ontario Minister of Infrastructure Kinga Surma and Ontario Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Rob Flack to actively seek the “adaptive reuse” of the buildings.
Controversy over the demolition plans also overshadowed council’s agreement on Monday to spend $250,000 to kick start about $20-million in water-wastewater improvements to service the redevelopment plans. The HCE motion and the OI letter were ultimately received and filed by council, with no action taken.
The OPA envisions a community of 3,500 homes for about 9,000 people on the hospital lands. It will now be forwarded to Elgin County council for approval, and the first signs of physical construction may appear as early as 2028.
While the land is currently owned by IO, the Province is considering divestiture and has meanwhile agreed to allow Central Elgin to manage the planning and development process. CE council has issued a request for proposal seeking private sector development partners.
The elephant in the room at council’s meeting was a letter dated April 9, 2026 from IO Senior Vice President of Strategy and Feasibility Amita Patkar.
“The Crown hereby provides formal notice that it is exercising its rights, privileges, and immunities in respect of the requirement to obtain municipal demolition permits for certain heritage-designated and non-heritage-designated buildings associated with the former … ” hospital lands, according to Ms. Patkar’s letter.
The municipality provided the community with only five days’ notice of the communication and the demolition plans. That information was included in the agenda package for the April 13 meeting. The agenda package was posted on the municipality’s website on April 9.
Several HCE members who reviewed the agenda and attended the meeting were prevented from speaking up, as council rejected efforts by Crs. Morgaine Halpin and Michelle Graham to permit the group to make its case for re-purposing the historic buildings.
Mayor Andrew Sloan and Deputy Mayor Todd Noble, as well as Councillors David Conners and Norman Watson, voted against a procedural motion to allow the HCE members to speak.
According to the letter, council and IO had actually established “a framework for advancing the project including the demolition” on Feb. 12, nearly three weeks before the final public engagement meeting (March 2) on hospital lands redevelopment, preventing more transparent and thorough public consultations.
“The buildings have been declared beyond their useful life and pose a health and safety risk in their current state,” Ms. Patkar stated in the letter.
“It has further been determined that the costs would be significant to adaptively-reuse the buildings and that the demolition of the former hospital buildings will allow for the proposed development outcomes to be accomplished, including housing and community uses.”
Ms. Patkar states “the Province is committed to honouring the site’s designation as a Provincial Heritage Property of Provincial Significance through the preservation of certain elements (of the buildings) to commemorate the site’s cultural and historical significance.”
That statement was interpreted by some observers to mean that elements of the demolished buildings may be incorporated into public features on the redevelopment site.
“It’s very disappointing,” Cr. Michelle Graham said after council’s meeting, “but I will do my best to stop this demolition through back channels.
“We don’t own the land, so we don’t have approval rights,” she added. “That is the Province’s decision, but the rest of council could have supported the idea to ask the Province not to demolish the heritage designated buildings.”
The Housing and Municipal Affairs Minister, Elgin-Middlesex-London MPP Flack, did not immediately respond to repeated requests for information by the Aylmer Express. Mayor Sloan also did not respond to inquiries.
“I wouldn’t characterize council as having agreed to demolition,” Cr. Morgaine Griffin said after the meeting. “In my view, it was presented as a fact of the process, not a negotiable.”
Preventing HCE members from speaking at council’s meeting is symptomatic of the entire OPA process, she added.
“That’s part of my concern with the OPA more broadly,” said Cr. Griffin. “I think the way it’s written allows us to say we’ve delivered on what the public asked for, regardless of whether key elements like the commercial area and future of the hospital buildings actually align with public feedback.
“If we’re going to rely on public engagement to guide decisions, the gathering of feedback has to be genuine, not performative,” added Cr. Griffin.
In 2008, the property at 467 Sunset Drive was designated as a Provincial Heritage Property of Provincial Significance under the Ontario Heritage Act (OHA). Central Elgin designated the hospital lands as a municipal heritage property under the OHA in 2019.
However, in December 2023, those designations were erased by the Government of Ontario’s Standards and Guidelines for Provincial Heritage Properties, advancing provincial housing priorities.
“It’s a backroom handshake,” HCE member Kimberly Saunders said as she left the meeting, repeating Cr. Griffin’s claim that 73 percent of public respondents during the public engagement process wanted the buildings preserved and repurposed.
“There is at least one developer, if not more, that would like to take those buildings right now and redevelop them into housing,” said former CE Mayor Sally Martyn, another HCE member. “It’s going to cost $71 million to tear them down. He (Mayor Sloan) said that in October to a whole group he took on a tour of the hospital.
“Why would you not let someone repurpose it, redevelop it, save our heritage and earn money for the Province instead of spending money,” added Ms. Martyn. “The Province are idiots.”
The property – bounded to the north by the City of St. Thomas, to the west by Sunset Drive, to the east by Fairview Road, and to the south by John Wise Line – includes the 22 buildings, landscaping, agricultural lands, and a natural wetland. The eight buildings along the west boundary – particularly the administration building – are considered to be the most historically significant of the bunch.
Construction of the buildings started in 1937 and the hospital opened for patient care in 1939. Work was interrupted by the Second World War and the property was leased to the Department of National Defence and used as a Royal Canadian Air Force training facility.
The hospital was returned to the Province and reopened to patients in 1945, operating until 1997, when mental health services were assumed by St. Joseph’s Care Group, as part of a Provincial reorganization, and continued to function until 2013.
Following the reorganization, the hospital lands were declared surplus by the province. The buildings remained mostly vacant although the facility was occasionally used as a filming location and emergency services training. The Province has been estimated to spend about $1-million to secure the property annually.
By Joe Konecny, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on Apr 15, 2026 at 07:14
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