A local non-profit is making a conditional offer to purchase the former Markdale Hospital to develop affordable housing.
Affordable Housing In Grey Highlands (AHIGH) Secretary Emmett Ferguson says the organization made the $600,000 offer last week.
“This is one that we have been looking at since we formed two years ago. As you may know, there is a new Markdale Hospital, so the old one has been sitting, waiting for Brightshores to decide what to do with it and we had thought it was a great site for affordable housing potentially, being in the downtown. We met with them in the spring talking about some of the options there, seeing as it has been a hospital there for 67 years at this point. There are some options were it could be disposed of without sale to other parts of the government and possibly be put into a public trust for some kind of non-profit affordable housing and they have decided to sell it at $600,000. We made an offer at the listed price with some conditions,” says Ferguson.
Some of the conditions include conducting an environmental assessment and condition survey on the building to determine if anything of the building can be salvaged or if it needs to come down.
“We are just trying to get a handle on what we can do with the building,” says Ferguson. “There could be some potential for sort of adaptive reuse of the existing structure, but all of that is down the road, we need to make some decisions whether that would be possible or not.”
AHIGH has enlisted the support from community members as well as developers, operators and an architect to determine what kind of affordable housing could be developed at the site.
“Given that we are a non-profit, not a charity, we are going to be offering these units to the market, that also means that as far as we can tell, the housing mix is going to be likely some affordable or under-market rentals that we can make available, but possibly the majority of those units would be at around market value. In order to get affordable units, we need to have a stock of market rentals as well,” says Ferguson.
Ferguson says it is now up to Brightshores Health System to accept the offer before next steps can be taken, including the assessments.
Over the next couple of months, AHIGH plans to undergo some fundraising to support the project. While it has not been set up right now, anyone interested in supporting the project can email ahighgrey@gmail.com.
“We know that housing is a big issue in Grey County, it’s a big issue in Grey Highlands, it’s a big issue in Canada,” says Ferguson. “There is no housing in Markdale in five-storey buildings and above, so we are really thinking, in terms of density, trying to get some new affordable rentals on the market.”
This is one of many sites AHIGH is currently looking at for affordable housing projects.