The North Ridge Lodge in St. Albert is slated to get 42 new units, but those won’t be lodge spaces.
Alberta Seniors announced March 23 that the province would invest $7.9 million into 42 new lodge units, doubling the capacity of the lodge.
Dennis Magnusson, executive director of the Sturgeon Foundation, which owns and operates the North Ridge Lodge, said the construction won’t be for additional lodge spaces, but will rather be for seniors’ affordable housing spaces.
“The seniors affordable housing is not the same thing as a lodge,” he said. “It’s more independent living. They have their own apartments with their own kitchens.”
Residents in those units are able to access varying levels of additional services including some housekeeping and some meals, and are also eligible for home support through Alberta Health Services.
There are currently 45 lodge units at the facility, which come with a specified level of medical care and staff on hand. In 2010, there were 48 units of seniors affordable housing added to the facility, and the 42 new units will be phase 2 of that project.
Magnusson explained that it’s not uncommon for residents of the affordable housing units to shift into the lodge units as their needs change.
“They come in with the intention of living independently for as long as reasonably possible,” he said. “If they do need to move from there into a lodge or a higher level of care, that’s what happens.”
Jennifer Renner, press secretary to Seniors Minister Jeff Johnson, said the news release wasn’t intended to be misleading.
“It is the second phase of this project, and it is providing space specifically for seniors in that community. If anything it’s become a campus of care,” she said. “It’s allowing seniors to stay in place in their community as they age.”
Magnusson said as of this week there are 68 people on waiting lists to get into Sturgeon Foundation facilities in St. Albert, with 36 people waiting specifically for the seniors affordable housing units, and he expects the units would fill up very quickly once work gets underway.
“Once we start construction, there will probably be an increased interest in the unit,” he said. “In other words, when we’re ready to open this facility it will be filled very quickly. That’s our expectation.”
He added if all goes according to plan, the project could be put out for tender next spring, with construction beginning that summer and being completed in summer of 2017.
“We’ve been working on this for quite a while now, so we’re very pleased this is going to go ahead,” he said.
The March 23 announcement also reaffirmed the government’s intention to provide funding for fire-suppression sprinklers in older lodges that were built before the sprinklers became mandatory under the building code. St. Albert lodges will receive close to $1.4 million in funding for those projects, but the timeline for the work isn’t yet clear.
