Business View - March 2015 135
from 90 to 150 suites, and, among the newer ones,
Bramalea Retirement Residence will have more than
140 suites in a converted hotel building and Harmony
Hill will include 72 independent apartments connect-
ed to a 134-unit retirement home.
“There’s no long-term big plan that stretches five years
out,” Koller said. “We’re going to see how the market
grows and goes, and we want to continue to improve
on every property we have.
We want to be as good as we
can be, and we won’t just be
building for the sake of build-
ing. Each and every one of the
homes will meet benchmarks
and we’ll continue to maintain
that.”
The average resident age
across the Greenwood ros-
ter is 87 years old, though
the number skews downward
in Hamilton, where Caroline
Place is in downtown, within
close proximity to a sports
complex, and art gallery and
a library. Meanwhile, the Mc-
Cowan Retirement Residence
in Toronto has converted a
whole floor into “Memory
Lane” environment, which
caters to residents suffering
from dementia who prefer to
live in a retirement home set-
ting rather than a typical long-
term care setting.
“It is fairly unique. Not every
home does that,” said Mad-
elaine Steller-Cain, executive
director at Caroline Place. “Some do have the security
– the locked wards where you can’t have people exit-
ing without being accompanied. There is more training
involved with staff. There is more unique meal prepa-
ration. People do pay a premium rate for that kind of
accommodation, but it’s their choice. They don’t want
to live in a long-term care, which is provincially run and
managed a little differently.”
HEALTHCARE
