'It’s heart-wrenching:' Former medical building in Georgina won't be rebuilt

Georgina Health Care Council will not be rebuilding the former Burrows medical building

Yorkregion.com
November 8, 2019
Amanda Persico

After more than two and a half years, the Georgina Community Health Care Council made the heavy decision not to continue with rebuilding the former Burrows medical building that was destroyed by fire in 2018.

And that leaves the former tenant, the Georgina Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinic, still searching for a permanent home.

“It wasn’t an easy decision,” said health care council chairperson Jim Beechey. “It’s heart-wrenching for us that we can’t do that.”

The council is not in a hurry to sell the lot, Beechey added. There are still plans to bring health services to the former Dalton Road site, in keeping with its medical history in town as the former practice of the late Dr. George Burrows.

One of the main priorities is to attract doctors to the area and advocate for quality health services in an area that is lacking, including adding reliable walk-in clinic services in town.

“We have our eye on that,” he said.

The suspected cause of the fire in the 60-year-old building owned by the health care council was electrical, said Beechey.

“The building was a writeoff,” he said. “That means we had to start from scratch, from design and engineering to site plans. We’re a volunteer group, not experts.”

After months of back-and-forth with the insurance company, the decision to tear down the fire-torn building didn’t come until well into the year, he added.

Along with eating up a large chunk of time, the costs to demolish the former building and start the legwork to rebuild it cost well over $100,000.

The council was awarded more than a $1 million in damages for a rebuild -- leaving about a $500,000 funding gap from insurance claims and anticipated costs for a new building.

The council held out hope for government grants and provincial funding for new programs that didn’t materialize.

“Everyone did the best they could,” said clinic director and nurse practitioner Beth Cowper-Fung. “The cost (to rebuild) was more than what we could imagine.”

Within days of the 2018 fire that ripped through the former medical building on Dalton Road, the nurse practitioner clinic set up a makeshift command centre and was up and running. Later that same week, the clinic signed a new lease and moved into its current location on High Street, said Cowper-Fung.

With more than 3,000 registered patients along with providing care at the local shelters, group homes and for the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, the clinic is looking to upgrade its currently tight space using a grant the clinic received in 2017.

“We do what we can with what we have,” Cowper-Fung said.

Ideally, the clinic’s new location would also have space to run the number of community health programs and workshops currently run from offsite locations, such as the library.

In the fall of 2017, the clinic was awarded about $1.6 million toward the wall-to-wall interior of a state-of-the-art clinic, which was then to be located on Lake Drive. But the plan fell through and then was to be used at the Dalton Road site.

The grant funding does not include the shell of a building, but is earmarked for everything on the inside such as wiring, doors and knobs, sinks and toilets, soundproofing the walls and being fully accessible, additional equipment and moving expenses.

Then the fire happened.

The clinic is looking at other options for a permanent home, with hopes of having a building in place and the interior complete in 2020.