What the mayor calls “an antiquated system” being used by the province to rank the importance of funding badly-needed seniors housing in Cochrane came under renewed scrutiny this week, as local officials met with the minister in charge of the portfolio.
Cochrane’s Big Hill Lodge is crumbling, and even the rooms that aren’t are so badly undersized that they wouldn’t meet today’s building codes.
Big Hill Lodge was originally constructed in 1977. The Lodge was expanded in 1982 and now accommodates 75 seniors. Since its initial construction, the standards of senior's facilities have changed.
The lodge had significant cracking and shifting back in 2020, making the need for a new building all the more imperative.
After the recent heavy rainfall, the situation hasn’t improved. Engineers declared the building is still safe, but at some point it may not be, according to the Rocky View Foundation (RVF).
Though technically not in a post-COVID world yet, applicants to get in line for a room at Big Hill Lodge are understandably reluctant to put their names forward to the wait list.
Carol Borschneck, CEO of the RVF (the organization that oversees Big Hill Lodge) said she understands the hesitancy.
“People are reluctant now, because of the pandemic, to come into a lodge. There’s also some reluctance because of the state of the building, and the rooms that are only 180 square feet, with a five-by-six bathroom, they’re not accessible at all,” she said.
It’s a reluctance common to any facility, as the pandemic hit long-term care facilities and other types of seniors homes hard.
But if the building in question is facing other challenges, that reluctance may be having an even more direct effect on wait lists. What that means now is that wait lists may not be a very useful barometer of need.
Mayor Jeff Genung expressed his utmost respect for the people running Big Hill Lodge, who, he said, “go above and beyond” the line of duty. But he added he understands people who may not want to go on a wait list.
“The reason we don’t have a line-up is no one wants to be there,” he said.
Genung referred to the provincial government’s wait list criteria as “antiquated” in a recent council meeting, when he suggested some advice for the seniors minister.
“We need to have her stop looking at wait lists,” he said.
Borschneck agrees with the mayor that the wait list yardstick is not representative of need, and should be updated. She added there’s been a lot of discussion in the Alberta seniors’ care industry over how to re-establish trust in the public’s eye, and get people comfortable with going into facilities again.
Town of Cochrane Coun. Susan Flowers is also serving as chair of the RVF, and she joined Borschneck in a meeting in Airdrie with Seniors and Housing Minister Josephine Pon on July 12, along with the mayor of Airdrie and his staff, to discuss seniors housing projects in Airdrie and Cochrane.
Flowers said the issue of using wait lists to help determine need has been identified and Pon informed them that an entirely new set of funding application rules is now being drafted by the department, to be completed by this fall.
“We talked with minister Pon about that and they’ve had problems and they don’t really have a method of deciding who is most in need, so they’ve come up with a new method where everyone has to fill out these needs assessments, and prove the urgency of the need,” she said.
She said Pon is aware of the deteriorating condition of Big Hill Lodge, but wasn’t making any promises to anybody at the meeting.
But Flowers remains hopeful that funding for a new lodge will be forthcoming soon.
“I can’t imagine, with the cracks in the walls, it’s not going to be a priority,” Flowers said.
The preferred location of a new lodge has been identified by the Town already – the lot behind the Lions Club Event Centre on Fifth Avenue. At this point, it is a recommendation only.
If the foundation and the town are successful in convincing the province to set aside funding for a new lodge in next spring’s budget, Borschneck said they could move ahead quite quickly.
“The town has to commit that land, that would help our case with the province,” she said. “And if they get servicing done, let’s say they do that in the spring, we could be working on our plans and maybe be in the ground by the fall.”
Under that best-case scenario, Borschneck said the doors to a new lodge could theoretically be opened to residents in about two years’ time.
Genung is promoting an approach that he says might make the minister’s decision to approve funding in the next provincial budget a little easier. Instead of putting forth a plan for a building based on population projections for the next few years with an appropriate level of servicing for amenities like the laundry and kitchen, he’s floating the idea of an architectural design that lends itself to adding more rooms in the future, without having to add related service areas.
For the fastest-growing town in Alberta, it’s something that might make enough sense to convince the province to take notice.
“I’d like to work with the Rocky View Foundation to come up with a real good design that would compel the minister to say yes,” Genung said.
The Town is doing the background work now, including researching servicing requirements, and formally designating the land for a new lodge.
The mayor said although he’s a fan of a kind of quiet diplomacy, after a number of meetings with the minister, it’s time to turn up the volume on this file.
