03-31-2011, 06:18 PM
Jack Peltier

Falcon Manor Update - Deadline for Rental Commitments

After much deliberation we regret to announce that we are unable to proceed with Falcon Manor. We have already advised those who committed to rent an apartment, members of the organizing group and the many supporters.

The organizing group, which includes people with extensive experience in seniors’ care and particularly in the operating, management and supervision of various seniors’ facilities, set out to design a facility that might best serve the needs of Merlin and area. The entire range of seniors’ services and accommodations was considered, i.e. from assisted home care through retirement residences to nursing homes to hospital care. Each of these categories is an important part of the integrated care system for seniors and each is complimentary to the others.

After much research we concluded, and we remain absolutely convinced, the seniors’ facility most likely to succeed in the village and area is a retirement residence. Such a retirement residence would enable local seniors to live independently in safety, comfort and dignity in the community they grew up in. We envisioned that residents would all know each other, or know of each other, and many would be relatives. That proved to be the case with those signing up and many were people returning to Merlin after having been away all or most of their lives. We envisioned and designed a facility to make living easy for seniors and to provide extensive support services and social programmes including a medical clinic, visits from medical practitioners, post office, library, beauty shop, barber shop, meals to be available, a fitness facility, exercise room, a spa, fully equipped kitchen, meeting rooms etc. All of this would have been overseen by people with extensive experience in health care and seniors’ care, including a live-in “house mother” to watch over residents who might need some extra help. The entire “community within a community” was designed to provide individual residents or couples with a “home-like” atmosphere and privacy as opposed to a room in an institutionalized nursing home. We believe, and experts have confirmed it, that for many seniors this kind of environment would either entirely eliminate or greatly delay any need to go to a nursing home or hospital. We also believe that the children of residents could take comfort that their loved ones were living independently, safely and comfortably in a close knit supervised community. We modeled Falcon Manor after several successful operations located elsewhere in the province.

In addition Falcon Manor was entirely privately funded so we could have had it up and running early in 2012. No taxpayer money was sought or needed for the building or subsequent operation of Falcon Manor.

We realize it was difficult for potential residents to commit to moving into Falcon Manor nearly a year in advance of it being opened. Many did make the commitment and we thank them for trusting and having faith in us. We set the estimated rents to basically cover cash costs including the principal and interest payments on a mortgage which would make up about $2,000,000 of the $3,000,000 needed to develop the project. It would have operated as a non-profit entity so there was no “financial fat” in the business plan. Accordingly in order to proceed we had to be assured the apartments were fully rented on opening day and we needed to have further reasonable assurance they would stay rented. Generally the estimated rents were about half that of comparable commercial retirement residences. Mortgage financing was not available if we did not have the rental commitments.

Perhaps we did not effectively communicate the nature of Falcon Manor and its benefits to seniors and the community but we tried through public meetings, information brochures and many individual meetings.

Whatever the case Falcon Manor will not proceed – perhaps it is a project for another time and another sponsoring group.

The support from dozens of people in the village and community was gratifying and overwhelmingly positive and we thank everyone for that. We thank the many people who worked long hours on the project over the past year, the local churches, the service clubs, and many individuals who offered their time and talent to help get it constructed and later to operate it. We thank the operators of various retirement facilities for providing information and advice. We particularly thank the people who signed up to rent an apartment and we apologize to them.

We are very disappointed that our project will not proceed but we take solace in the fact that we had tremendous support from the village and community and we know it is far better to try and not be successful than not to try.

Falcon Manor Organizing Committee
March 31, 2011
Last edited by Jack Peltier; 04-01-2011 at 07:11 AM.