High costs cause delay in Pine Meadow reconstruction

Jeff Green | Jul 19, 2012

Members of the Pine Meadow Management Team and the Pine Meadow Redevelopment Committee have spent the better part of 10 years pleading and coaxing government officials for approvals and funding to refurbish the long-term care home and bring up to the provincial standards.

Finally, all of the ducks seemed to be in a row, and with loan support from Infrastructure Ontario that is available to public sector institutions, the Northbrook home was about set for a ground breaking early this summer.

But that all changed when the construction tenders came in higher than had been foreseen. This week, the following statement was released by Bud Clayton, the chair of the Pine Meadow Management Team:

“Due to higher than anticipated construction costs, an unsustainable cash flow, and on the advice of our project management team, we are delaying the redevelopment of Pine Meadow Nursing Home in Northbrook, until February or March of 2013. We will again have our construction management team ask for rebids, in the hope that the construction industry will realize that we do not have unlimited funds. The teams at Pine Meadow will work diligently throughout the coming fall and winter to make the redevelopment a reality in 2013.”

In an interview, Clayton said that if they had gone ahead with the project under the current scenario, the home’s reserve funds would be cut to such a level at certain times during the construction, that if anything happened that required a few thousand dollars to fix, Pine Meadow would find itself strapped for operating funds.

“We couldn’t do that.”

With the construction window for 2012 starting to close, the decision was made to delay. The delay will give the team an opportunity to do more fundraising, and make whatever changes are necessary to bring the project within budget.