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Renovation work for the Sundridge and District Medical Center is expected to begin in early November.
Village of Sundridge clerk Nancy Austin says the calls for proposals were sent out in the first week of October, a process that is expected to take four weeks to see what comes in and who will be selected for work.
Austin announced to the Sundridge and District Medical Center Committee that work will begin immediately after the order is placed.
Austin says the medical center will continue to operate during the renovation, which means staff will be moving from one side of the building to the other so the contractors can do their job.
“It’s going to be a hectic time with all of the renovations,” Austin told committee members.
“There will be a lot of adjustments, such as a temporary entrance.”
The medical center is a joint service between Sundridge Village, Strong Ward, and Joly Ward.
Strong pays 50 percent of the renovation costs, Sundridge pays 40 percent, and Joly pays the remaining 10 percent.
The approximately 1.5 million US dollar project is divided into three parts.
Austin says Phase A will take place in November, December and January and will include the creation of a new entrance and ramp and renovations to the old area for nurses.
Phase B involves renovating the doctor’s side of the building while the final phase is improving the parking lot.
Approval for the renovations took years and was mainly due to numerous false starts of the project.
At a regular council meeting in May at which Sundridge approved a third of the project, Coun said. Steve Hicks said the renovations are as high as they are today as the three city councils have never been able to unanimously agree on how to move the project forward for successive terms.
He once said that instead of renovating the medical center, the committee was asked to look for a piece of land on which to build an entirely new building.
Hicks said everyone had the best of intentions, but the project to construct a new building never got off the ground.
The result was that the staff of the medical center stayed in a facility that was in dire need of renovation and continued to work.
The medical center has only one doctor, Dr. Sarah MacKinnon.
Hicks, the medical center committee, and members of the area’s city council agree that a modernized medical center will help bring a second doctor to the area.
Hicks said at the council meeting in May that the current state of the building was not conducive to attracting a second doctor.
Bertrand Wheeler Architecture of North Bay carried out the design work for the renovation.
The renovation is expected to be completed in 2022.
Rocco Frangione is a reporter for the Local Journalism Initiative and works at the North Bay Nugget. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Canadian government.
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