Potential residents upset as Grenfell long-term care home pushed back again

The William Albert House in Emerald Park is very nice, with lush hallways, common rooms and even home pets, but it’s not where Doug Kent and his wife Eileen would have preferred to be living.

They’d rather be in Grenfell, the town about an hour east of Regina on the Trans-Canada Highway.

“That’s where we spent 90-something years of our life, both of us. Went to school and got married and farmed,” explained Kent.

But he said it’s looking less and less likely the couple will be able to ever move back home now that the long-term care home set to be built in Grenfell has been pushed back again.

In May last year, the provincial government announce Scott Builders had been chosen to build the home, and in October a ground-breaking ceremony was held in the town.

However, the SaskBuilds & Procurement now says the province has been unable to reach an agreement on commercial terms with the builder, and the parties have now parted ways. The government declined to give any more detail on what went wrong, citing commercial confidentiality.

A new tender has been posted publicly for general contracting services for the home, including construction of the project.

In a statement, SaskBuilds said the government will utilize the design finished by Scott Builders, but a new contractor will build it.

The home was expected to have 33 beds, with spa tub rooms, a kitchen, and living and dining spaces. The space chosen is at the northeast corner of the town.

The provincial government is hoping to have the new team in place by this fall for construction.

The original completion date for the home was expected to be early 2025, but with this setback the new expected completion target isn’t until late 2026.

“Chances are now that we won’t make it,” Kent said with a laugh when he heard the news. “We’ve been waiting for it for a long time and, in fact, have a little bit of money invested in it.”

Kent said he and his wife were hoping to be able to move into a Grenfell long-term care home a few years ago, but they aren’t very hopeful now.

Lawrence Haylock is frustrated with this new development. He lives in Grenfell, but his wife had to be put in a home in Broadview. If the home were built in town he said his wife would just be a block away from him.

“I’m old too and I don’t know if I’ll ever see (a new long-term care home). I’m almost 82 and I don’t know if I’ll ever see one being built here,” Haylock said.

They aren’t the only ones waiting. Haylock estimated about 10 per cent of the town’s population is 75 or older.

“We’re all aged people here. We’ve all lived here all our lives and now we don’t know where to go,” he said.

The community has been working toward a new long-term care home for 25 years, according to Kent.

“We had barbecues and all the little things that you do to make some money, including Brent Butt for a day one time and a big do that day – made a lot of money, as a matter of fact,” he explained.

The town had about $1.2 million in a trust to go toward the project, according to Mayor Rod Wolfe in 2019.

The need for a new home became acute in 2018 when mold issues in the previous long-term care home, the Grenfell & District Pioneer Home, shut it down and the remaining residents had to be dispersed to other facilities. At the time, the government said those residents would be given the first opportunity to move into the new home.

At first it was unclear what would happen to the facility, then the workers were given layoff notices. In 2022 a request for proposals was put out for a new home in the town, and in the 2023-24 provincial budget $10 million dollars was put toward the building of the home.

Some, like Haylock believe the government should have put its time and money toward repairing the old Pioneer Home.

“They had a home here. They could have fixed it up. It was good enough for people, they just needed to get the mold out,” he said.

Brian Hardy is on the board for the home. He said there was a meeting held in the town where the provincial government announced the delay, and Hardy said the community is still dealing with the negative feelings about it.

“We were all shocked,” he said with a grim chuckle. “There have been so many delays and then just a further major delay like this.”