Last Wednesday, a group of health care sector workers and other community members were invited to the former Fort Frances mill site for a presentation by BMI Group on the immediate next steps for the site.
Last June, the Times reported that BMI was poised to redevelop the former mill site into several different “precincts,” or sectors. Last week, BMI announced the first precinct to see major work will be the Wellness Precinct in the vicinity of La Verendrye General Hospital. The first major building to be constructed will be a “Wellness Centre For Excellence,” a project currently in advanced planning stages with the hope of being “shovel-ready” by spring 2024.
Peter Hargraves, principal architect at Sputnik Architecture, gave a presentation on the future of the site. Hargaves said that many municipalities are building up similar districts in areas around hospitals.
“The new strategy that is emerging in some markets is this concept of hospital districts or hospital-oriented design where the hospital becomes kind of the town centre around which the town was planned,” Hargraves said. “We believe with the size of the hospital, you have many opportunities to develop the extensions of health care that include short-term housing for people that are working at the hospital or within the health care industry or for people that are requiring short-term stays for any treatments they are receiving at the hospital.”
This first project is being undertaken with input from the Fort Frances Physicians Group with the understanding that its clinic may move into the new building, though no contracts have been signed.
BMI Group is run by brothers Justus, Paul, and John Veldman. Paul was present at the presentation last week. He says that though the pen hasn’t been put to paper, the physicians group has had input on the plans for the building.
“Our teams are in active conversations around things like where do desks go, where should windows go and how wide is a hallway. So we’re at that level of detail,” Veldman said. “There’s a real commitment there but the pen still has to hit the paper.”
Showing renderings for the new wellness centre, Hargraves pointed out new facilities for the physicians group, and spaces for other medical care providers potentially for dentists or others. The Wellness Centre for Excellence would also feature multiple floors of residential space above the potential clinics or pharmacy. The residences would most likely in the form of seniors apartments on a rental basis.
Veldman agreed that the current timeline of being ready to start in the spring of 2024 for this first piece is ambitious, but said he feels they have enough support from the community to get the necessary work done to be starting on foundations by next spring.
“Sometimes you put a date out there and it becomes your own worst enemy,” he said. “We’re optimists. I think those dates are best case scenario. The feeling in the room tonight with conversations with the mayor and others is that the support is there to champion this through.”
There are many processes the building has to get through to be prepared to get going by next spring when the ground thaws, regulatory, planning and other things.
“Spring is as good a time as any to start construction,” Veldman said. “Especially when you have a smaller window of time from a climate perspective. If you don’t say spring (2024), you’re almost saying next spring, we want to push really hard to see if we can make that happen.”
The company said they are aware of the costs it will incur and know that it will cost multiple hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of the long haul.
There are grand plans for the future of the former mill site. Some of the building will take place in association with Ziibi Anishinaabe Investments, the investment arm of Rainy River First Nations (RRFN). Veldman says that RRFN is an active partner in the redevelopment process.
“We’re active partners, we’re real partners on the ownership of the bridge,” Veldman said. “We have an active partnership that’s looking at the redevelopment process. They were part of the committee that informed the master plan and they’re part of daily conversations around what this site can look like. We believe that that relationship is going to continue to be very fruitful not just from the financial perspective and maybe even outside of the financial perspective as we’re on their traditional territory. They bring a lot of knowledge to this place and it’s an amazing opportunity for us to work together on finding out what the best use of the space is and ensure it’s accessible to all people.”
Ziibi has a right of first refusal agreement with BMI to invest in projects throughout the redevelopment. The Veldmans have also secured investments from the Netherlands and hope to be able to secure further funding for smaller projects going forward.
The building currently occupied by BMI’s offices on the site, formerly the mill’s store, will also be converted into a recreation centre, potentially with spaces for indoor turf fields, basketball courts and other recreation amenities.
Currently, an artistic fence/sculpture is being installed near the intersection of Scott Street and Central Avenue. Entitled “Lean In,” the fence is designed in a way to encourage people to be curious about the work being done on the site and try to get a peek. Be sure to obey the traffic signals if you’re going over for a look, though it may be a while before there is construction on that part of the site.
BMI said they aim to continue further public engagement on the redevelopment of the site and have proposed other projects for the different precincts including a corresponding redevelopment of the border area to the one planned for International Falls over the next several years.
