New long-term care home in North Bay set to open in the spring

After significant delays, the Northern Heights long term care home project in North Bay is moving along, but the cost has gone up.

Officials with Sienna Living gave an update on the project’s work on Thursday.

Elaine LeBold, 92, signed her name into the wall at the future northern heights long-term care home.

“I’m looking forward to being here,” said LeBold.

“Everyone is very, very friendly.”

A current resident of Water’s Edge Long Term Care Home, she knows of the tight spaces at the current building.

“I’m looking forward to having wider doors because I can’t get inside in the washroom for example and the hallways are quite narrow,” LeBold said.

Northern Heights, with 160 beds, is currently under construction at the site of the St. Joseph’s Hospital, will replace Water’s Edge.

“Taking care of seniors, like I talked about, is a huge privilege and with huge privilege comes huge responsibility,” said Nitin Jain, Sienna Living president and CEO.

Sienna Living purchased the property back in 2017. After significant construction delays, the project is back on schedule but off budget. It has increased from $55 million to $80 million.

“Ontario went out of its way to fund these long-term care homes and if it wasn’t for the investment from the government this project would not have started,” Jain said.

The design for the three-storey facility includes five wings for 32 residents with dining rooms for each wing.

The long term care home will have around 175 staff members.

Natalia Kusendova-Bashta, Ontario’s Minister of Long-Term Care, was impressed by what she saw during Thursday’s tour.

“We are educating our nurses, PSWs and nurse practitioners because we need every single profession at the table<” Kusendova-Bashta said.

“We need all of those PSW, nurses and nurse practitioners to be graduating and working at their scope of practice.”

Once complete in the spring of next year, the facility will begin accepting the residents from Water’s Edge.

LeBold hopes to move in on Day 1.

“The new building will be very exciting,” she said.

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