Construction on a new 61-room senior citizens lodge in Cold Lake is expected to start in early 2016, after a company's bid for the project was selected last week.
“We think we are going to have a really high quality project with some very good construction going on really soon,” said Chris Vining, vice chair of the Lakeland Lodge and Housing Foundation.
A total of 19 contractors came out to the build site in late November to take a tour of the lodge and get a grasp of the project at hand. Full tenders were submitted by 12 of those contractors.
The numerous bids gave those involved with the project a large selection of tenders to choose from, resulting in a price that was in line with what they had hoped for.
“There was a pretty good spread from low to high, but there was a good cluster down to the lower end as well,” said Vining.
“The (winning bid) came in very close to projections, which is very good considering in the past, with the Bonny Lodge project's last construction phase from a few years ago, we missed the projection on that one by 20 per cent (over cost) when the bids came in.”
Edmonton-based Seko Construction submitted the winning bid of $13.3 million, according to Ray Prevost, who also sits on the Lakeland Lodge and Housing Board.
The second lowest bid came in from UPA Construction, who submitted a bid of $14.1 million.
As for the project, the idea of building a new Cold Lake senior citizens lodge has been the works for the past five years, with many in the region lobbying hard for funding.
Over the past two years members of the Lakeland Lodge and Housing Board have been hard at work creating a plan, designing the project and getting those designs approved by engineers.
This push for the Cold Lake facility led to the government awarding $6.8 million in funding to the Senior Citizens Lodge in late 2013. The funding came as part of a $47 million commitment the federal and provincial governments made to construct five projects for low-income seniors.
The new lodge is going to replace the current seniors lodge, a 48-room facility that sits on 12th Street just west of the Cold Lake Marina.
While the current 40-year-old building isn't in that bad of a condition, the sizes of the rooms are unsuitable for seniors to live in, measuring in at approximately 110 square feet.
The 61-rooms at the new facility will be over three times the size of the old rooms, with initial designs calling for them to be 375 square feet.
“Right now we have a vacant wing that needs to come down to accommodate the new lodge,” said Vining. “That is the first thing that is going to happen and we are hoping that is going to be within the next couple of months.”
The project is expected to get underway in early 2016 and will continue throughout the spring and into the summer.
“We hope to start with a sod turning ceremony at the end of February and then start construction shortly there after,” said Prevost.
