Santé Québec’s Hull office tower to house regional labs

Tashi Farmilo

Santé Québec’s newly acquired office tower at 70 rue Crémazie in Hull will become a permanent site for the Outaouais health network, with medical laboratories and a local service point among its first planned uses, after the provincial health agency closed the $66.9-million purchase on August 31 to bring clinical, administrative and support services together under one roof.

Much about the building’s future remains undecided. Santé Québec told the Ayllmer Bulletin that it has not yet set an overall budget or a full schedule for the work, because planning for how the space will be used is still under way. Renovations will be carried out in several phases, the agency said, and it cannot yet say how many employees will work in the tower or how many patients will eventually use it.

Two projects are at the top of the list. The 10th and 11th floors will be fitted out for OPTILAB, the provincial network that handles medical biology testing, as part of a reorganization of the region’s laboratories. The ground floor will house a local service point open to the public. Other services, and the dates they will open, will be announced as planning moves forward.

Part of the building already belongs to the regional health network in practice. Santé Québec Outaouais’s executive leadership and its communications and partner relations branch were working from the ninth floor before the sale went through. The tower’s existing tenants are staying. The federal government, which occupies space in the building, remains under the terms of its current leases, with Santé Québec Outaouais now taking on the obligations of landlord.

The purchase price was set through negotiations between Santé Québec and Multivesco, the agency said. The acquisition took more than two years to complete. When the province first announced its plan to buy a downtown building in 2024, it pointed to the site’s central location and easy access by Rapibus. Santé Québec did not give a new date for the public opening.

The building is part of the same plan as the future hospital on the Asticou site, and Santé Québec said planning for the two is being done in tandem.  Whatever the final layout, Santé Québec says the tower is not a stopgap. The agency describes 70 rue Crémazie as a permanent facility that will eventually hold clinical services, administrative offices and support functions for the region.