More than 70 seniors have started to move into McKellar Place retirement home, which should relieve the pressure placed on the regional hospital, says an area MPP.
McKellar Place, a former hospital and now a 100-unit retirement home, received a $1.8 million loan from the provincial government through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation .The construction also includes 35,000 square feet of office space. Residents started to bring in their furniture but couldn’t move in until the building had an approved fire plan.
MPP Bill Mauro (Lib. Thunder Bay – Atikokan) made the announcement at McKellar Place on Tuesday. He said the funding helped to immediately addresses the issue of overcrowding at the regional hospital by providing an additional place for seniors to go for long-term care.
"That aging population puts a tremendous pressure on the health care system in all of its forms," Mauro said. "Our Seniors Centre of Excellence, which we’re funding, is going to have 132 supportive housing units. But that project won’t be full completed for another two to three years. But we’re able to get some of those people now and put them in this project. It helps those people and helps the hospital."
The building cost about $10 million to reconstruct. Ahsanul Habib, owner of McKellar Place, said he was happy to have received additional funding from the province. He said residents could move in as soon as the fire plan is finished fine-tuning by the end of the week.
"As an architect and as a community member, we’ve been losing too many valuable buildings," Habib said. "People think it isn’t practical to reconstruct them, it’s risky and no one wants to take that kind of risk. We’ve been losing heritage buildings, good buildings and this McKellar Place is probably one of the highest quality buildings compared to all the other retirement homes."
When Habib received the proposal three years ago, he jumped at the opportunity to rehabilitate the old building. He said if he hadn’t received the funding he wasn’t sure if the bank would have provided him a loan to complete construction.
Despite having 20 years experience as an engineering architect designing buildings, Habib hadn’t worked on a project like McKellar Place, which is why the bank was hesitant to give him a loan, he said.
"This hospital has been here for about 60 to 70 years and it carries cultural ties and we’re were able to preserve it," he said. "For me that makes me really happy."
