Mountain View County reeve Bruce Beattie has been voted in as chair for Mountain View Seniors' Housing (MVSH), and is coming in at an exciting time.
MVSH has recently acquired a grant and is seeking loans to build a new facility in Sundre that would house 103 residents, according to CAO Sam Smalldon.
The organization held an orientation meeting on Nov. 25, during which Beattie was voted in, along with Sundre mayor Terry Leslie being voted in as vice-chair. Members were also brought in for the personnel, finance and building committees, Smalldon said.
“As well we had two requests for proposal (RFPs) that closed this last Friday (Dec. 13), one was for pharmacy services, and the other was for architectural design on the Sundre project,” Smalldon said.
Decisions on the RFPs are now under review by MVSH officials, and he is expecting a decision to be made on those by the board near the end of January.
“We have a conceptual design that we've shown and that we've provided, but the actual finished product may be different depending on the architect we pick,” he noted.
The project is estimated to cost anywhere from $16- to $20 million, with $3.8 million coming from an Affordable Supportive Living Initiative (ASLI) grant for 40 supportive living spaces at the facility – SL4 and SL4D – with the rest of the funding coming through financing.
The land has already been chosen for the site, and the Town of Sundre will be developing the parcel and selling the land to MVSH once utilities have been run to it, as it is going to be in a new area of town, he said.
The preferred site for the new facility is up to 11 acres of property south of the Sundre Sobeys.
Beattie told the Gazette that the journey towards a new facility started two years ago when a demand study was done to determine the need for a seniors centre in Sundre.
“(That study) determined there was very significant need for a new lodge and an expanded lodge operation in Sundre,” said Beattie.
“And from that point on, it was a matter of determining what the size would be and what the costs associated with it would be.”
It was a competitive process to acquire the ASLI grant, and the first year that MVSH applied, the request for funding was denied, he noted.
“But the province recognized the need for a new lodge in Sundre, so they actually asked us to resubmit our proposal and we did that, and the second time around we were successful.”
The construction won't be starting any time soon though, as the entire board has to be comfortable with the move due to the amount of money involved, he added.
“So you want to make sure you've got all your i's dotted and t's crossed before you make a final decision. And we don't expect that final decision on the project itself; it could perhaps be into August (2014) before we make that decision.”
Smalldon said the board is mainly focusing on the development of the Sundre project at present, though staff at the lodges themselves have been focusing on helping residents enjoy their Christmas, while still maintaining sickness-free facilities.
So far, he added, MVSH has been free of any outbreaks of flu and other viruses, and that staff have been making extra efforts to maintain high standards of hygiene and cleanliness.
