Mental health centre moves ahead with $57M from B.C.

B.C.'sminister of health announced that the provincial portion of the funding for a new mental health facility at Vancouver General Hospital has finally come through, and demolition of the old centre could start this fall.

The new $82 million facility will be namedafterJoe and Rosalie Segal, who donated $12 millionto build it in 2010, Health Minister Margaret McDiarmid said Friday.

The new Joseph & Rosalie Segal Family Health Centre, which should be complete in 2017, will be a significant improvement over existing facilities, said McDiarmid.

"What we will have in the new centre is a better physical space: a safer safe, a space that is just more welcoming and is a much better environment for those who are ill enough to need to be in the hospital when they have a problem with their mental health," McDiarmid said.

"The centre will be built on the site of the Willow Chest Centre here in Vancouver, whichhas served long and well, but is now an outdated facility."

The Willow Chest Centre, which was built in 1948, has been housing somemental health services and administration offices for several years.

Theexisting mental health facilitiesat VGH have beencriticized by some patients and their familiesas overcrowded, decrepitand unsafe.

Years of waiting

Plans to demolish the buildingand build anew have been in the works since 2002 and, in 2011,Joe Segal offered $12 million to help build the new facility, but the donation went untouched for more than a year because the B.C. government had not committed the remaining funds for the project.

Last year, Premier Christy Clark announced that the province would contribute $48 millionto the new facility, while the the VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation and its corporate and private donors would contribute $25 million.

McDiarmid amended that figure Friday to a $57 million contribution from the province.

The Segal family is stillcontributing $12 million, which McDiarmid notes is one of the largest-ever personal gifts for mental health in Canada's history.