Standalone Stollery Children’s Hospital to be built in south Edmonton

A standalone Stollery Children’s Hospital is one step closer to reality, as the province has revealed where the building will be constructed.

The new Stollery will be at the northeast corner of 122 Street and 51 Avenue, on what is currently farmland on the University of Alberta’s South Campus.

The province said the field was chosen for its large size, potential for future expansion and proximity to the university’s existing hospital. The empty field will allow construction to begin without the need to demolish or relocate existing buildings.

The chosen spot is about two kilometres from the nearest transit centre — the South Campus/Fort Edmonton Park LRT and bus station.

View image in full screen The new Stollery Children’s Hospital will be located in south Edmonton, just off 51 Avenue and 122 Street. Google maps

The province said planning is currently underway to determine the hospital’s size/space, service and infrastructure needs.

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The planning phase is anticipated to be complete in 2026. When the standalone hospital will be built and opened has yet to be determined.

“This is a historic moment for kids’ health and for every family who has ever walked through the doors of the Stollery,” said Karen Faulkner, president and CEO of the Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation.

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“We are incredibly grateful to the Government of Alberta and the University of Alberta for making this land announcement possible.”

The provincial government began this process in 2021 with an initial $1 million, matched by the Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation.

3:33 Stollery Children’s Hospital solution for kid’s health includes eventual plan for standalone building

The 2024 provincial budget allocated $20 million over three years to advance plans for a standalone Stollery that would offer more beds, larger clinical spaces, more private rooms and dedicated areas for children and their families.

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The province said last year’s provincial budget dedicated another $11 million over three years to further the planning and design work.

The need for a bigger Stollery has been evident for many years.

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The current Stollery Children’s Hospital opened in 2001 and is a hospital-within-a-hospital, physically existing inside part of the University of Alberta Hospital.

It has 236 beds and is the second-largest children’s hospital in Canada after the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

It has among the highest inpatient volumes of any children’s hospital in Canada, according to the province, seeing about 300,000 children per year.

The hospital sees 55,000 emergency room visits each year and performs about 12,000 surgeries.

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The facility is also Western Canada’s referral centre for pediatric cardiac surgery and a national leader in organ transplants for children.

The hospital serves families in a geographical area of more than 500,000 square kilometres.

Nearly 40 per cent of the patients at the Stollery come from outside of Edmonton.

1:48 Quest to get the Stollery Children’s Hospital into its own building

To mark the land announcement milestone, the Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation is launching what it calls a once-in-a-generation fundraising campaign to raise $1 billion to transform children’s health called “No Bounds.”

“This campaign will help build the new Stollery,” Faulkner said. “But it will also go further, because we believe kids deserve no bounds on their potential.

“Building a place from the ground up for kids will make care easier to access, allow for more spaces that reduce anxiety and heal hearts, and bring together the best minds in medicine, research and innovation.”

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The foundation said No Bounds is its most ambitious fundraising endeavour yet.

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