Grey County is scaling back its Rockwood Terrace Long-term Care Home redevelopment project, but staff say the County will go ahead with building 128 Class ‘A’ beds.
Councillors heard in their Committee of the Whole meeting Thursday, the estimated cost of $108 million in back in March of 2022 has increased by about $30 million a year later for redevelopment of the home in Durham.
An updated project cost was estimated at $140 million on Thursday.
The home requires redevelopment in order to meet revised provincial standards.
Grey County CAO Kim Wingrove says it’s likely 40 assisted living units will be removed from the plan as well as parts of the ‘village square’ that haven’t already been dedicated to a specific purpose. The village square was intended to be a little retail and service area.
Wingrove says, “This home will be redeveloped, and although we’re not able to move forward with the assisted living or the other independent living accommodation at this time, we still do have additional property on this site, as well as the property where the existing Rockwood Terrace building is.”
She says council decided Thursday to go back to the most basic design option they were given to consider initially which consists of the 128 upgraded long-term care beds.
Taking into account inflation, interest on debt and other factors that had increased the price to $140 million on Thursday, council decided $92 million would be the upset limit for the project.
Wingrove says that will be financed through debt to be paid back over 25 years.
Previous Grey County councils have considered a number of different visions for Rockwood Terrace, one was a campus of care with assisted living units and a seniors’ apartment building and the village square. As costs have risen, those plans have been pared down.
Wingrove says the project will take some time to redesign, and an aggressive August deadline for completed plans set by the province will likely be missed. That means some top-up funding will not be awarded.
When asked if the County will reapply for that funding in the next round, Wingrove says, “Do you hope that there will be another opportunity to apply for additional funding? Absolutely. We know that there are many, many projects that are in some stage of development that were also interested in this additional funding that simply weren’t going to be ready in time, so we have a lot of company in this space.”
Before the decision was made Thursday, Director of Finance Mary Lou Spicer told councillors to keep in mind, there would also be an increase in operating cost with the addition of 28 beds.
Spicer outlined some challenges the County faces. She said looking at the ten-year capital plan, a number of projects would be affected if they borrowed over $100 million. It would defer some other projects, and Spicer noted there’s an increasing need for social housing, there is reduced funding, required investments in paramedic infrastructure, rising capital and renewal replacement costs due to inflation, an unquantified impact of the cost to address climate change targets, and possible impacts of bill 23 with regard to inflation and interest rates and its effects on development charges revenue.
Spicer also pointed out the County has aging infrastructure.