A business plan could be announced in the next few months for Richmond Lions Manor, three years after Vancouver Coastal Health said it would be rebuilding the facility that used to sit along the north side of Steveston Community Park.
B.C.’s former minister of health and NDP candidate for Vancouver-Kingsway, Adrian Dix, told the Richmond News that the plan is “well underway.”
“(The business plan) is expected to be approved in the fall, and then we expect to proceed with the project,” said Dix.
“And that will allow the temporary facility to move back, and people to be moved in.”
The site of the former Richmond Lions Manor long-term care facility, at 11771 Fentiman Place in Steveston. . By Submitted photoHowever, the facility rebuild has taken too long, according to one of Richmond’s BC Liberal candidates.
“The last confirmation (for the facility) I saw was Vancouver Coastal Health in 2017,” said Matt Pitcairn, who is running in Richmond-Steveston.
The lot at 11771 Fentiman Place in Steveston has sat empty for the past five years, since the former Richmond Lions Manor had deteriorated and was torn down.
When the facility was closed in 2014, residents were moved, temporarily, to the former Executive Inn Express at 9020 Bridgeport Road in north Richmond, where they have been housed since.
In 2017, Vancouver Coastal Health announced it would rebuild the Fentiman Place facility with public funds and it would house 144 beds.
“Now roughly, three and a half years later, we’ve still seen no progress on the rebuild of Lions Manor in Steveston,” said Pitcairn, adding that the rebuild is a “no brainer.”
Dix said the facility is proceeding, however, “capital projects sometimes take longer than you’d like.”
He said that when he became minister of health, many of the facilities weren’t ready to go. They had no money or plans attached to them, leaving older facilities below modern standards.
When the Fentiman Place facility was closed in 2014, residents were moved to a former hotel on Bridgeport Road.- . By Google Maps screenshot
That point was echoed by Kelly Greene, NDP candidate for Richmond-Steveston.
“Unfortunately, there’s a huge deficit in seniors care left over from the BC Liberal government that we are working on, and I am very excited to see that there’s this almost one-and-a-half billion dollars going into long-term care, particularly in Richmond because we do have an aging population,” she said.
If re-elected, the NDP have pledged to invest $1.4 billion into long-term care over the next 10 years. Part of that, said Dix, would be moving away from multi-rooms to single rooms.
The Liberals have made a similar promise – $1 billion over the next five years to long-term care facilities, with the goal of giving all B.C. seniors their own private room.
