News

Work begins on expansion to bring long-term care to PWL Red Deer

October 9th, 2019

When Points West Living Red Deer opened its doors in the summer of 2016, there was some talk of an eventual expansion. Now, a mere three years later, that expansion is set to begin. The completely new six-storey structure, going up on the north side of the existing building will house a higher level of care than the current community can provide.

150 new suites

The current PWL Red Deer building has 25 Independent Supportive Living rental suites, and 114 Designated Supportive Living suites (of which 69 are memory care). The expansion is proposed to provide the community with 75 new long-term care suites, and 75 new memory care suites.

Long-term care allows 'aging in place'

Adding long-term care to the services provided will allow residents to ‘age in place’. “It will give residents the opportunity to live in the same place, see the same faces, and for families to stay together,” says General Manager, Tracy Elliott.

As much resident-directed care as we possibly can

“Our intention is to do as much Eden as we can in long-term care,” Tracy says. “Principle 7 of The Eden Alternative model of care states that the medical model should be the servant of genuine human caring, never the master. It may be tough to balance that out with people who have such high medical needs in long-term care. But we have been trailblazers in coming up with systems that work, so we’re going to do as much resident-directed care as we possibly can. Our ultimate goal is that residents have the ultimate say in how their care is delivered.”

Let the construction begin!

Tracy says current residents are intrigued at the coming expansion. “Residents are excited. We brought out the architectural renderings and put them on display for a couple of days. There was lots of curiosity and questions, which we are fielding as best we can, keeping residents in the loop,” says Tracy. “In the meantime, we can expect lots of banging and thumping to start next door any day now, and continue until the expansion is complete in 2021.”

Read more about the project in this September 25 article in the Red Deer Advocate 

Photo: Architectural rendering of the new expansion of PWL Red Deer. The new building will be attached to the north side of the existing building, and will include commercial units and 92 additional parking stalls.