Chilliwack\u2019s dream of replacing the outdated Bradley Centre put on hold<\/p>\n
Published 11:03 am Monday, March 23, 2026<\/p>\n
A long-awaited long-term care home for Chilliwack, announced in 2024 to replace the outdated Bradley Centre, is on hold, without a completion date in site.<\/p>\n
The plan to build a $274-million, 200-bed care facility for seniors was one of seven B.C. long-term care-home projects placed on hold in the last provincial budget.<\/p>\n
Provincial reps made the announcement that they were \u201cadjusting the timing of delivery\u201d of those projects, to incorporate the lessons learned on similar projects already underway.<\/p>\n
Chilliwack Coun. Jason Lum called the decision \u201cfrustrating\u201d and pledged to attempt to get the decision reversed at the Fraser Valley District Hospital board level.<\/p>\n
Lum said he remembered the initial planning around 2016 when the Hospital District secured land and put a\u201d high level agreement in place\u201d whereby the Hospital District would build, and the health authority would operate a new long-term care facility.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a model that\u2019s worked elsewhere, and it was a boost to finally put us on track to receive the infrastructure our community needs,\u201d Lum said in a post reacting to the delayed construction news.<\/p>\n
\u201cFast forward nearly 10 years, and the scope kept growing \u2014 mass timber, higher Step Code requirements, LEED, exploring added components like daycare.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those features are well-intentioned but costly, all adding delays.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we\u2019re being told these projects are too expensive \u2014 approaching $1.8 million per bed \u2014 and they\u2019re being \u2018re-paced\u2019 which I guess is a fancier way of saying paused, with no known restart date.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lum noted \u201cwe can\u2019t keep layering requirements\u201d on critical healthcare projects, and then \u201cact surprised\u201d when they become unaffordable.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeniors can\u2019t \u2018re-pace\u2019 aging, or the complex healthcare needs that come with it. They can\u2019t wait while projects are redesigned over and over again with the cost of each delay \u2014 to families, to hospitals, to the system \u2014 only keeps growing,\u201d Lum fumed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be bringing a resolution to the next Hospital Board meeting calling on the Province to reverse this decision on Bradley. We need to get back to basics: build the beds, and deliver the care. Full stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
The seven long-term care projects that were paused are in the following communities: Chilliwack, Abbotsford, Kelowna, Fort St. John, Squamish, Delta and Campbell River.<\/p>\n
The initial announcement to replace the outdated 90-bed Bradley Centre was trumpeted with great fanfare by provincial and Fraser Health officials who gathered on a rooftop patio at Chilliwack General Hospital on Aug. 19, 2024.<\/p>\n
The original plan was for construction to start in 2026 on Chilliwack\u2019s new five-storey care home on Mary Street, with an expected completion date of 2029.<\/p>\n
The project had reached the procurement stage of establishing design and construction management teams by the end last year.<\/p>\n
The Chilliwack project was one of a cluster of care-home facilities fired into the planning pipeline, as part of an \u201cunprecedented capital expansion\u201d for this type of facility across B.C., as then health-minister Adrian Dix explained when the project was announced at CGH in 2024.<\/p>\n
The \u201cstate-of-the-art\u201d building design was to feature private rooms for each resident rather than shared rooms as structural improvements were coming on the heels of the pandemic, as well providing social and recreational spaces.<\/p>\n
It is not known when the construction and procurement process will resume for the seven projects on hold. The B.C. budget document no longer lists a completion date for any of them.<\/p>\n
\u2014with files from Lauren Collins, Black Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chilliwack\u2019s dream of replacing the outdated Bradley Centre put on hold Published 11:03 am Monday, March 23, 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":["post-558289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}