Seniors will have to do more convincing if they want an exclusive building at the Willow Square site. Wood Buffalo Housing and Development met with the Golden Years Society yesterday afternoon. It presented a mixed-housing complex with street-level retail, commercial and non-profit space. President Joan Furber says it’s not what they were expecting.
“They say that the land, it can’t support just the seniors. It’s too valuable a property to just put the seniors in there, because the seniors won’t pay enough to support it. It has to come somehow to a break even,” she says.
Furber thinks WBHD can work with the seniors to fit their needs, but she also thinks the Municipality should offer support to make seniors housing a viable option at the site.
“If we need a little help in the end, then we need a little bit of help at the end. We did a lot in the middle. I think the city should go in there and float a debenture and make it affordable for the seniors to be able to live there. If they did that, then they could build it,” says Furber.
WBHD launched consultations last night with a public engagement session at the Sawridge Inn. While the signs on the downtown site say an Aging in Place facility is coming soon, WBHD is calling the property a “Community Campus”. The developer has said none of the ideas are final and there’s a lengthy consultation process ahead. A tentative date for groundbreaking is spring 2016.
