The Saint John Regional Hospital Foundation has reached its $12-million goal for the Clinic 1 expansion capital campaign.
Officials with the foundation announced a $1 million lead gift from the J.T. Clark Family Foundation on Tuesday.
“We’re feeling very excited and quite humbled, to be frank,” Jeff McAloon, president and CEO of the hospital foundation, said in a phone interview.
John Clark, the founder of the J.T. Clark Family Foundation, reached out to McAloon in early January after receiving care at the ambulatory clinic.
What Clark thought was a simple cold sore turned out to be Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare and aggressive form of skin cancer. It was removed and repaired within 29 days from diagnosis to surgery.
“He said ‘I really want to do something significant and lasting to recognize the incredible care that I received and to recognize how incredibly lucky we are as a community to have this level of care,'” said McAloon.
The $12 million is a combination of donations secured through foundations, corporate partners, individuals and events, with no government funding. According to the foundation, more than 2,700 donors from across Canada made gifts during the campaign.
The total includes more than $930,000 raised during the Love Your Hospital Radio-thon on Acadia Broadcasting’s sister stations, Country 94.1 and 97.3 The Wave, over the past four years.
“This is a really significant campaign, one of the more significant we’ve ever tackled, and to have such tremendous response from the community over the last four years is truly humbling,” said McAloon.
The expanded clinic will be named The J.T. Clark Family Foundation Ambulatory Clinic in honour of the foundation’s donation. A section of the clinic will also be named after the Love Your Hospital Radio-thon and its partners.
The expansion will increase the square footage from 7,000 to 14,700 square feet, improving accessibility, privacy and patient comfort and care.
Clinic 1 serves more than 40,000 patients from across Atlantic Canada every year — a number McAloon said is expected to reach 46,000 in the next five years.
The clinic, which houses more than 30 specialities, has been untouched since the hospital was built in 1982, according to the foundation.
McAloon said while all of the construction planning is completed, they are waiting for the COVID-19 pandemic to be behind us before starting the actual work.
“At the Saint John Regional Hospital, we have a swing unit on the third floor that’s currently occupied as a COVID unit,” said McAloon.
“Once we have indicators from government that we can safely and appropriately close that unit down, we’ll be moving all of the clinical activity from Clinic 1 into that swing unit and then we’ll start construction.”
That could happen as early as this summer or even early fall, McAloon said. The work is expected to take about 18 months to complete.
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