Northern Heights Care Community is expected to open next spring.
As work on the retirement residence on the former St Joseph’s Hospital site enters the latter half, officials invited residents, team members and various dignitaries to tour the building and sign a wall in the home’s Great Room.
Natalia Kusendova-Bashta, Minister of Long-Term Care and a nursing grad from Nipissing University, says they have a very ambitious goal of creating tens of thousands of new long-term care beds in Ontario.
“We are working overtime, day in and day out, to ensure that we are delivering on our commitment to build those 58,000 long-term care beds,” Kusendova-Bashta says. “We have made another commitment to the construction funding subsidy, $155 million, and that’s why it’s so great to see projects moving along.”
Northern Heights was originally expected to open in spring 2023.
Nitin Jain, president and chief executive officer of Sienna Senior Living, says they had shovels in the ground in 2021 but then costs skyrocketed.
“The original cost of this project was $50 million, and the cost came in at $80 [million] so we had to take a step back,” he says. “Ontario went out its way to figure out how to fund these long-term care homes. If it wasn’t for the investment from the government this project would not have started.”
Jain says the project got underway last year and will be completed next spring.
Vic Fedeli, Nipissing MPP says it’s impressive to see what’s happening across the province and here at home.
“The previous government built 611 long term care units in the previous 10 years,” he says. “In North Bay right now there’s almost 611 units being built.”
Officials say Northern Heights will be a welcoming, modern long-term care home for 160 residents, replacing Waters Edge, located in West Ferris.
Premier Doug Ford was on hand when the project was announced in July 2021.
