New Queens long-term care home on track to open by fall 2026
Andrew MacVicar is the executive director of Queens Manor Home for Special Care in Liverpool. (Rick Conrad)
As the new long-term care home in Liverpool takes shape, Queens Manor executive director Andrew MacVicar says the years of planning are paying off.
“Walking into the building and seeing it in 3D and seeing it unfolding, it’s pretty rewarding,” he told QCCR in a recent interview.
“It’s just really exciting to see it coming alive and it’s also really rewarding to see design elements that we spent a long time thinking about and now seeing that we were right.”
The new 112-bed facility will replace Queens County’s two existing homes – the privately run Queens Manor and the municipally owned Hillsview Acres in Greenfield. Located across from Queens Place Emera Centre, it will add 22 long-term care beds in Queens County.
“Anybody that’s driven by can see that we’re moving really quickly. It’s an 11-step process and I believe we’re at Step 9. The external envelope is up. You can clearly see bedrooms taking shape, dining rooms taking shape.”
Construction began on the $100-million complex in November 2023, after two years of intensive planning and design consultations with residents, families, staff and the community.
“I have to say the first couple of years were really labour intensive because you have one chance to design the right building,” MacVicar says.
“So we spent a lot of time asking a lot of questions about what we don’t like about our existing buildings, where we see the future of how we deliver care. We always ask the question, ‘Is this idea, this design idea, is it friendly to our staff?’”
Queens Manor shared this photo on its Facebook page of the progress of the new long-term care home in Liverpool. (Queens Manor Facebook page)
All bedrooms in the new manor will be single occupancy with private bathrooms. And each room will also have ceiling lifts that extend to the bathroom, which will make it easier for staff to help residents with mobility issues move anywhere in their room or bathroom.
“It enhances dignity for our residents, but it also enhances safety for our staff. So some lifts that may have been one- or two-person assist can be done by one person. And so it frees up staff, it prevents workplace injuries. It’s a real enhancement to our facility that you won’t see in others.”
MacVicar says that’s only one of many improvements over existing facilities.
From better multi-use spaces to help with infection control to something as seemingly simple as how the complex is oriented on the site, he said it was important to emphasize the dignity and safety of residents and staff alike in the design.
“There are two elements to providing care – the people and there’s the environment, your infrastructure,” he said.
“Our people provide excellent care, they demonstrate excellence every day, but our building hasn’t matched that. I think you’ll see a building that is friendly to its staff, which in turn means that it just enhances their ability to provide excellent care. Residents will have more privacy, more dignity. Spaces will be bright. It will be very difficult for you to find a space in that facility that doesn’t have a window. And it is a facility and institution that does not feel like a facility or an institution. It will feel like a home.”
He said staff and the design team spent a lot of time investigating what worked at newer facilities elsewhere in the province and talking to people at those facilities to see what they would improve if they could.
“So to address the future, we looked backwards a bit to some of the facilities that have already been built and we used these visits as an opportunity to test our ideas to see if what looks good on paper actually works in practice.”
MacVicar said it was also important to choose a new location that would make the manor visible to the whole community.
“So there was a shift towards a location that would take our residents and embed into the centre of the community rather than what I call warehousing seniors on a hill out of sight, out of mind. And when your community is forced to look at your long-term care facility every day it prevents them from being forgotten, which I think quite clearly this location will prevent that from happening.”
Construction is on track for residents to move in sometime in the fall of 2026.
Before that, though, the new facility needs a new name.
“We want to make sure our new home captures the legacy of both organizations but we also want to make sure we come together under a new brand, a new name.”
MacVicar said the community will have a chance during a naming campaign this fall to give their input on what the new long-term care home in Queens County will be called.
Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com
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