By Purvi Radia
Starting this month, tourists and seniors will be mingling at the Ramada Inn.
The building, located at 480 Metcalfe St., is being converted top-down, two floors at a time, into The Palisades Retirement Residences.
Retirement Life Communities, a Toronto-based company that owns retirement homes across Canada, started the conversion when it purchased the building two years ago. Since then, the company has since been running the building as a hotel.
Phil McKenzie, vice-president of Retirement Life Communities, says they want to offer large living spaces and a variety of services to residents at a reasonable cost.
He says large living space is rare in most traditional retirement residences that are based on the nursing-home model, with small wards and large common areas.
“By buying a building for less than it would cost to build it, it allows us to provide those bigger spaces at a reduced cost,” says McKenzie. “If you build it from the ground up, then on the day that you open it, typically you’ve got an empty building … there are a lot of (financial) losses in the first couple of years.”
McKenzie says an added benefit of converting a hotel is that the company can keep the hotel running during the renovation process which can offset expenses.
The $3-million conversion process should be completed by the end of 2000, says McKenzie. So far, the eighth and ninth floors of the building have been completed — each suite has been equipped with a kitchen.
Construction is slated to begin soon on common areas such as a movie screening room and a European-style pub and café.
Once completed, monthly residence fees will range from $1,600 to $4,600, depending on the suite size and the level of service package.
The Palisades tries to accommodate both independent seniors and those requiring assistance with daily activities such as doing laundry, cooking, housekeeping and taking medication.
“There’s a higher percentage of people who are living in this style of accommodation in the Ottawa area than almost anywhere else in Ontario,” says McKenzie.
Seniors in Ottawa can afford to live in retirement residences, says Rod Wilson, senior vice-president of marketing and corporate affairs with Central Park Lodges Ltd.
“With the influx of more stabilized industry like the high-tech industries now, and the attractive government sector, people have very stable incomes in the Ottawa market,” says Wilson.
Central Park Lodges Ltd. owns 15 retirement homes in and around the Ottawa area, and most recently opened the Colonel By Retirement Residence.
“Another reason why retirement living is so popular here is because there are so few nursing beds. There’s a long waiting list to get extended care as well, so a lot of that transfers down to the retirement sector,”says Frank D’Amato, manager of Sandy Hill Retirement Residence, which is almost a year old.
These new retirement residences give seniors more choice, but they add to the local economy as well, McKenzie says.
He adds that converting a hotel to a retirement home will provide new jobs by adding dieticians, nurses and health-care workers to the existing staff.
Wilson says each facility, depending on its size, hires from 35 to 70 full-time and part-time employees.
“That doesn’t even count the number of suppliers who supply us with dairy products, food products, materials,” says Wilson.
“There’s a great deal of additional resources that we ask from the community.”