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On September 23rd 2020, Rekai Centres presented their latest plans for a new Long Term Care (LTC) home in the West Don Lands to Waterfront Toronto's Design Review Panel. The Montgomery Sisam Architects-designed facility will bring 348 new long term care beds to the neighbourhood.
Rekai Centres, a local non-profit, already runs LTC care homes in downtown Toronto: one at Sherbourne and Carlton, the other further north on Wellesley. The newest addition to their roster will be located on Block 5 of the West Don Lands, which fronts onto Cherry Street between Front Street and Eastern Avenue, and will go by the name of Cherry Place.
Long term care has been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic; a fact which Rekai is quick to acknowledge, and which it says has had important influences on the design of the new centre. Combined with projected shortage of beds moving forward into the 2020s, the reduction in density necessitated by COVID-prevention measures have made the development of new LTC facilities all the more urgent.
Special care is being taken to incorporate the hard lessons learned from COVID into the design. The home will include two negative pressure isolation rooms, with the additional option of transforming the activity room into a third. Garbage and laundry chutes have also been placed with the complications of isolation procedure in mind.
In an effort to help protect vulnerable populations from the potential dangers of a hospital emergency room, the centre will feature a seniors assessment program, run collaboratively with St Michael’s Hospital, where community members can go to have minor health conditions treated.
The ground floor will also feature a nine-station dialysis centre, also run cooperatively with St Michael’s, and designed to allow for separation between stations, ensuring maximum infection control.
Rekai College will launch alongside the new LTC centre, offering a two year specialized Personal Support Worker (PSW) program in the hopes of alleviating stress placed on the system by the current shortage of PSWs. This will be the first program of its kind in Ontario.
Other programming will include special Dementia floors, organized into “neighbourhoods” and coded according to colour schemes chosen by a Master of Colour Therapy from OCAD University.
The plan originally included both mid-rise and high-rise components when Option For Homes was also a partner with part of the complex dedicated to residential. The latest plans have dropped the high-rise Option For Homes portion, leaving a more modest 13 storey, 53.7 metre tall building fully given over to LTC. Montgomery Sisam Architects liken the exterior design to a cruise ship, with a secondary mass stepped back above the eighth floor to allow for green space on “deck.” There will be a second terrace on the roof.
The material palette includes an off-white precast framing around precast brick “slips” beside each window.
As part of the development agreement reached with Waterfront Toronto, the building will have to meet the standards of the Waterfront Toronto Minimum Green Building Requirements as well as LEED Gold.
Below-grade work is slated to begin in the second half of 2021, and above-grade construction following in the first quarter of 2022. Occupancy is planned for 2023. The project has already received support from local resident associations.
You can learn more from our Database file for the project, linked below. If you'd like to, you can join in on the conversation in the associated Project Forum thread, or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
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| Related Companies: | Bousfields, Counterpoint Engineering, LEA Consulting, RWDI Climate and Performance Engineering |
