ST. ANTHONY, N.L. — St. Anthony Basin Resources Inc. (SABRI) is hopeful seniors in the St. Anthony area will have access to affordable, comfortable cottages in 2020.
SABRI took over the former Harriot Curtis Collegiate high school at 22 Tuckers Lane, near the hospital, post office and pharmacy, making it an ideal location for seniors housing. It contracted the demolition of the building, which has taken place.
"Now in the new year we are going to go to tender to do the road work and the water and sewer for the cottages,” Sam Elliott, SABRI executive director told the Northern Pen. “We can put 26 apartments there. They are going to be four-unit buildings and two-unit buildings.”
The plan is to have accessible, slab on grade, ground-level buildings, with apartments approximately 900 square feet.
“I don’t know about getting them all done in the first year,” Elliott said. “We are hoping that we may have something by the end of 2020. It all depends on the construction season and if we run into any roadblocks with our water and sewer tender."
Most work will go to tender, and contracting, which can be time consuming.
“And you have to work within budgets, it’s only so much you can afford to spend,” Elliott said. “We’re on our own on this. This is something we took upon our own."
SABRI looked into potential sources of government funding, but decided to proceed on its own because of restrictions.
Elliott said the Town of St. Anthony developed a 10-unit complex for low-income seniors, with a cap on income determining eligibilty.
“But we have a lot of people in our region who are retired and got a little pension which puts them over the cap,” he said. “There’s no places for them, there’s nothing. So either they move on to the larger centres in Deer Lake, Corner Brook, Gander, Grand Falls, or they got to stay in their own homes.”
He said they did a survey around the area, and seniors’ cottages is an amenity people want.
“I think we had 96 people fill out our survey and 56 of them was over that threshold of what the town already got here that they qualify for,” Elliott said. “There is a clientele out there looking for that."
'Magic number'
Elliott said he receives calls from seniors questioning if and when cottages would happen.
“It’s definitely a go project,” he said.
For those who have lost a partner or when family has moved away, there’s a lot of stress associated with keeping up a home, snow clearing and repairs, he said. Instead, they could sell their homes and use the money as rent in comfortable cottages where they can have peace of mind.
“Once people get used to that mindset, I think that will change a lot,“ Elliott said. “We would like to put something there that will pretty well take care of them. We have to do it in an affordable manner so we can at least pay for it at the end of the day, but they are not overburdened where it's too much for them to be able to cost to go there either.
"We are trying to find that magic number.”
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