New for-profit LTC home planned for Orléans among the recipients of provincial funding injection
Arch Corporation owns the Champlain LTC residence in L'Orignal that would be replaced by the new facility in Orléans.
Taylor Blewett, Ottawa Citizen
Published Mar 20, 2021 • 4 minute read
If all goes according to the owner’s plan, a brand new for-profit long-term care home will open its doors in Orléans in a matter of years, with residents at the aging home it’s replacing — nearly an hour’s drive down the road in L’Orignal — invited to relocate.
The new 224-bed facility, slated for construction on a vacant lot on Old Montreal Road near Famille-Laporte Avenue, is one of 80 projects to which the Ontario government is allocating 11,707 new or upgraded LTC spaces. The province announced a $933-million investment in these projects on Thursday and said they would help reduce wait lists and bring an end to hallway medicine.
“Our home will be everything and much more than what the existing home is. Totally new,” said Lorne Stephenson, who handles corporate affairs for Arch Corporation.
Arch, a private equity firm and relative newcomer to the long-term care sector, owns 10 homes in Ontario, including the Champlain LTC residence, a 60-bed facility formerly owned by industry giant Chartwell that sits on the banks of the Ottawa River in L’Orignal.
“That former site … is a little bit old and needs a fair amount of work,” Stephenson said. “That’s why it’s far more efficient to build a brand new building close by rather than try and renovate.”
The future site of the new home is actually some 70 kilometres down the road, and residents will be transferred once the entire building is completed. That, too, is some ways down the road since the estimated construction schedule for the $60-million capital project is 20 to 24 months, plus however long it takes to secure necessary approvals from the city.
“Once that new building is up and running and fully occupied, we’ll see what the ministry … if they have any desire to do anything else with the former site,” Stephenson said.
Asked by this newspaper how he felt about relocating residents an hour’s drive from where they’ve been living, Stephenson pointed out that “they have the option, there are other homes around,” including other new builds, and that this was the property Arch was able to acquire.
As for how it might go over with the residents’ visitors, Stephenson said that, when his own mother was in a long-term care facility, his drive to see her was two hours.
“So, it’s all over. Sure, some people are very close and they look for homes that are very close. That will be something that everybody will have to make their own decision about, I understand that.”
The new building, according to Stephenson, will be state of the art.
A management firm currently handles day-to-day operations of the Champlain LTC home and will continue to do so at the Orléans residence. Champlain’s executive director, Dany Roussel, is enthusiastic about the new project.
“I think … every new build is good news for (everyone) living in long-term care.”
The provincial earmarking of nearly a billion dollars for 80 LTC projects comes at a time when the wait list for a bed numbers around 40,000. It also comes at a time when the involvement of for-profit entities in long-term care is under significant scrutiny.
Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said Thursday that some of the provincial government’s $933-million investment was going to “the very for-profit corporations that allowed horrific suffering, neglect, illness and death to run rampant in their facilities during the pandemic.”
But there are others, including OPSEU President Smokey Thomas, who applaud the provincial funding injection. In a media release, the union pointed out that 63 per cent of the 7,510 new LTC spaces announced Thursday would be delivered by not-for-profits and municipalities.
“We’ve seen what a disaster privatized care has been during the pandemic,” Thomas said. “It’s time to do better. The transition won’t happen overnight, but we’re headed in the right direction, finally.”
Stephenson, meanwhile, said his company was bringing new capital and new thinking to the long-term care sector. “And there is a very significant backlog that the province wants to satisfy, and … the private sector can go some distance in doing that.”
Fellow for-profit Extendicare was allocated 192 upgraded spaces in Ottawa as a part of Thursday’s announcement.
Extendicare is building a new long-term care home in Stittsville — provincial support was announced in November — with construction planned to begin before the end of this year. According to the ministry of long-term care, all residents at Extendicare West End Villa will be relocated to the Stittsville home and West End Villa will be renovated and gain a small addition. Then 192 beds will be transferred to that location from Extendicare’s Starwood and Laurier Manor locations.
The company, whose Ottawa residences saw number of devastating COVID-19 outbreaks, said it was committed to redeveloping all older homes in Ontario to modern design standards.
Other local allocations include 156 spaces for the Perley and Rideau Veterans’ Health Centre — the Perley wants to build a new 240-bed LTC home on its campus — and 60 new and 70 upgraded spaces for the Osgoode Care Centre. Both are non-profit homes.
While timelines for LTC development projects can vary based on several factors, the ministry said that, generally, once an operator has a site and financing secured, homes take an average of 36 months to develop.
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