The design of a long-term care facility under construction in Toronto’s inner city challenges the institutional stereotype by prioritizing resident well-being features and integrating itself into the fabric of the neighbourhood.
The 13-storey, 348-room cast-in-place concrete tower called Rekai Cherry Place east of downtown Toronto is a design by Montgomery Sisam Architects Inc., a Toronto firm with a long list of extended care centres to its name. The construction manager is Multiplex Construction Canada.
The design organizes residents into smaller clusters than traditional care homes, providing abundant natural light and amenities such as landscaped terraces and rooftop therapy gardens overlooking the city and Lake Ontario.
Dustin Hooper, project architect, defines the tower as a “racetrack design” in which the bulk of the services are planned around the inner core of the tower while bedrooms, lobbies, dining rooms and recreational areas are laid out on the perimeter to maximize natural light and views.
“The beauty of the single loaded corridor is it creates a walking loop for patients,” he says, noting dead-end hallways can be difficult to navigate for patients in cognitive decline.
In many long-term care facilities, residents are housed in clusters of 32 bedrooms to maximize design efficiencies but the not-for-profit client, Rekai Centres, chose clusters of only 22 bedrooms to improve patient experience.
“It’s in line with what we are encouraging other clients to move toward.”
For optimum efficiency, the interstitial space for mechanicals is on the eighth floor, taking up about half of the floorplate. The floor also serves as the resident’s main amenity space, featuring a town hall, chapel, hair salon and room for Humber College’s 50-student co-op program for personal support workers, says Hooper.
Landscaped terraces are on levels eight and 13, surrounded by high glass guardrails.
“The design manual from the ministry (Ontario Ministry of Health) stipulates that outdoor space should be at grade but given that it is a downtown site with relatively busy streets…we didn’t think it appropriate.”
The double-height ground floor offers community outreach programs, a senior’s assessment centre, medical lab space and a dialysis clinic for residents and the neighbourhood at large. That’s atypical for extended care, Hooper says.
Six infection control rooms with piped oxygen and negative pressure systems, keys to eliminating the spread of contagious outbreaks, are on levels seven and nine, minimizing lengthy and costly runs of piped oxygen from the eighth level interstitial space.
Hooper says the building envelope is clad in precast concrete modules and thin multi-coloured brick inlay, variegating the facade.
The project will meet the Toronto Green Standards Tier 2 Version 3 requirements, which focus on energy efficiency, greenhouse gas reductions, design resilience to climate change and green spaces, the latter accomplished through trees, shrubbery and grasses on levels eight and 13 terraces.
“It will likely meet all the LEED targets we had set out originally, but it is not seeking LEED status,” he says, pointing out LEED Gold was dialed back early in the project due to budgetary constraints as the pandemic hit and construction costs soared.
Hooper says the project has gone through a number of iterations over 10 years, stemming from budgetary constraints, soil remediation requirements and the complexities of the city’s approvals process.
“That timeline isn’t typical, but it speaks to the resilience and fortitude of the client to stick with the project.”
The Rekai Centres owns and operates two long-term care facilities in downtown Toronto. Rekai Cherry Place will be the third and is scheduled for completion in 2028.
“I think it will be one of the projects we are most proud of,” says Hooper.
