Grey County approves $91 million long-term care project
Grey County has approved the historic construction of the new Rockwood Terrace long-term care home in Durham.
At its meeting on April 25, county council voted in favour of awarding the Rockwood Terrace construction project Melloul-Blamey Construction Inc. for a total construction price of $59,230,000.
“It’s very exciting, it’s something the community has been looking forward to for quite some time,” Warden Brian Milne said after the meeting.
The new Rockwood Terrace will be the largest capital construction project in Grey County history. Once finished, it will be a brand new 128-bed class A home that will replace the 100-bed facility in Durham that was built in the 1980s.
The total project costs actually came in below what was expected by county staff last year. The current total costing is just over $91 million. In 2023, county staff estimated that the project would cost just over $96.6 million. The total costs include the work to prepare the site in Durham as well as project planning and engineering costs.
The contractor must be approved by the provincial Ministry of Long-Term Care, but county officials said at the meeting they expect that approval to come quickly. Construction should start by the end of May and is expected to be complete by 2027.
“That’s really nice to see,” Milne said of the final price coming in under budget. “It’s a two-year project, at minimum, maybe we’ll see better pricing as we go on. Hopefully.”
The county will have to borrow just over $61 million for the project and a loan has already been secured through Infrastructure Ontario, county staff said at the meeting.
The $61 million is the amount left to pay after reserves, development charges, project amounts already paid and provincial grants are factored into the picture.
The county currently has $1,961,000 in the annual county tax levy for the Rockwood Terrace project. Staff have estimated the annual debt repayment will be just over $4.3 million. The county will receive a provincial grant of $1.2 million to offset that cost. It will have to add over $1.1 million to the annual county levy to finance the debt costs of the project over 25 years.
With the construction happening over multiple years, county staff plan to phase in the $1.1 million tax increase over the next three years at $350,000 in the 2025 budget, $390,000 in 2026 and $425,876 in 2027.
The annual repayment amount is based on a staff estimate using an interest rate of five per cent. The actual rate won’t be known until 2027 when the county has to borrow the funds. The county will self-finance the work until that point in time.
CAO Kim Wingrove presented the report to council detailing the results of the tender process. The county pre-qualified three contractors for the Rockwood work, but received just two bids. Wingrove said the other two companies withdrew due to other projects on their agendas. The second bid came from Walsh Construction for $82,921,000.
Wingrove said a lot of work has been done and praised county staff for their efforts to this point, but pointed out that there is a lot of work to come.
“This is such a big project. We’ll be in this for two more years,” said Wingrove. “It will need to be carefully managed.”
Chris Fell, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, CollingwoodToday.ca
