Antonio Tibollo is coming home.
Tibollo, 100, one of the few remaining residents at Upper Canada Lodge in Niagara-on-the-Lake, will be one of 160 residents at the new Gilmore Lodge, in Fort Erie, when he moves in on Dec. 18. He was at the new long-term care home on King Street to check out his new digs with his family on Dec. 5, as Niagara Region hosted an open house at the home. The event drew hundreds for tours of the facility and to speak with regional staff who worked on the project.
“He’s been looking forward to this for five years,” Antonio’s son, Mike, said as the family looked around what will be the room at Gilmore that the family patriarch would be calling home.
“We can't believe the beautiful colours, they’re bright and cheery.”
Antonio, who spent most of his life in the border town, was living, along with his late wife Sebastiana, at Crescent Park Lodge in Fort Erie before he was moved to Upper Canada Lodge, where he was close to his daughter Mary. The new Gilmore Lodge – built at a cost of $85 million – will be replacing both Upper Canada and the old Gilmore facility on Gilmore Road in the Fort.
For Mike, that will mean much shorter trips for him and his wife, Mary, to visit Antonio.
“Actually, my wife and I live just about a block over from here,” he said. “My father lived about a block away from here, too. We're back in the same neighborhood.”
The facility is built on land that used to occupy the old County Fair Mall that Niagara Region purchased in 2017 for $4.2 million. In addition to the new Gilmore Lodge, the property will also include a new 10-bed hospice operated by Hospice Niagara.
Tyler McLellan, the manager of long-term care facilities redevelopments for Niagara Region, said there was a need for a new long-term care home in Niagara as the existing facilities in Fort Erie and NOTL had reached the end of their lifespan.
“We did a feasibility study to look at if we could reuse those spaces,” McLellan said. “This was an opportunity to bring our residents' quality of life up in a new facility with new features.”
It was a big project, he added.
“It represents a significant investment by the Niagara Region as a municipality.”
Meanwhile, when Niagara Region Director of Senior Services Paolo Varias head how the Tibollo family were impressed with the new facility, it was further confirmation to him that the Region was on the right track.
“One of the comments that I've heard from them is that [we] really went all out for this,” Varias said.
With an eye to serving Niagara seniors to the best of its abilities, it was important to get it right, he added.
“This is where they will live. This is where they will start their whole life, and this is important to them.”
Varias said the goal is to improve the quality of life for the residents who’ll be living there. To help meet that goal, there was a lot of consultation work done long before shovels first went into the ground three years ago.
“It's built from the input of everyone – from residents, family members, our staff members – our goal is really to address some of those challenges that we've seen in long term care,” Varias said.
Thought was put into the design to encourage residents to socialize. That, he said, will combat loneliness and isolation some residents in long-term care feel.
“If you can see the common areas in the spaces, it invites conversation,” Varias said. “It allows people to have meaningful connections with each other, not just with their co-residents, but with staff, with any visitors that they have. It was designed for that purpose.”
Mike Tibollo, agreed. He and his family were impressed by what they had seen.
“It’s everything that we're anticipating. It’s exactly what we were hoping for.”
The Region is also currently amid a redevelopment of the Linhaven long-term care home in St. Catharines. When completed, the new five-store facility on Ontario Street will feature 256 beds, up from the current 248.
The last time the Region opened a new long-term care home was Deer Park Villa, in Grimsby, when a redevelopment of that home was completed in 2012.
The 160,000 square-foot Gilmore Lodge, meanwhile, will also include a new community hub offering programming and services for seniors.
