The public was invited to see three new concepts for the redesigning of the hospital in Steinbach's main entrance at an open house on Thursday.

The open house was held at the Bethesda Personal Care Home's great room. Ken Klassen is the Vice President of Finance and Capital at Southern Health. He says the open house is a way to bring the design concepts to the public and get feedback from people so they can make a final design that suits the general public.

Graham Taylor is the Design Architect of the main entrance project. He says the concepts have been developed to have enough differences between them that people can point out what they like and do not like. He notes the design team will take what they have heard from attendees and apply the most like options to find product.

Klassen says the final design may not be any one of the options presented on Thursday.

“These are all concepts. The final product might not look like any one of them but it may be a combination of the drawings that are there, or it might be something totally different. We came up with these concepts and we wanted to bring them to this public open house to get feedback from people.”

Taylor says there are two main aspects of the design that are in all three concepts.

“We are placing an elevator into the existing footprint of the entrance and you would essentially go in where the stairs are and enter into the main hospital through that elevator. There would be a link between the emergency department and the hospital that is fully enclosed and heated. Those are the key points that are absolutely in the project”

Taylor says another feature all of the designs have is an enclosed and heated space on the ground level. He notes even though all three concepts tackle the problems at hand differently they will all cost a similar amount.

“We have had them roughly priced and they are in a very close price range, so the costing is not a major decision factor thankfully.”

Taylor says the community input has been very helpful in the design process.

“We have had another community consultation before this and we heard a lot of people. There are a lot of people turning out for this and we specifically chose to have more than one community consultation. The health authorities heard the outcry from the community, and we were very conscious to make sure the community was fully involved in the whole process.”

Klassen says the redesigning of the entrance has been a long process.

“It has been very good. We are very pleased with the turn out. We know that there has been a lot of conversation regarding the entrance in the community and we really want to listen to what the people have to say and to get moving on this project as soon as possible.”