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Fort’s Senior Housing to Commence Construction Health Center to Follow shortly By: David Deschesne Fort Fairfield Journal, August 22, 2012 The proposed Senior citizen housing on Presque Isle Street, behind Family Dollar, is expected to begin sometime around the first week of September. JP Martin was the successful bidder for the contract and came in $400,000 under the project’s proposed budget. “We are in the final phase of the loan closing and lawyers for the lending bank, investors and Maine State Housing are all working together to get things ready for signing,” said Fort Fairfield Town manager, Dan Foster. “The Fort Fairfield Residential Development Corporation is currently advertising for tenants and has received a few responses already.” The town of Fort Fairfield will be acting as the developer for the project, which will net them a developer’s fee from MSHA in the amount of $362,000. Foster says $80,000 of that money will be used to pay the consultant for the project—Coastal Enterprises, Inc.—and the remaining money will be applied toward the new health clinic that will be situated on the same campus as the apartment houses. “Coastal Enterprises has done an enormous amount of work and they’ve earned every penny they get,” said Foster. “This was a much larger undertaking than we could have handled in the town office and we are thankful CEI has been able to assist us in this process.” The town expects to use money from their UDAG account, which is intended for community development programs, and will pay the account back as money from the project is received. In addition to the 21 unit apartment complex, the housing project will also feature a stand -alone clinic. The building the clinic will be housed in is a separate project, will be owned by the town and leased to a health care provider to provide health care services to the townspeople under criteria established by the town council. “We felt the need to have our own clinic, controlled by the town and leased to a qualified provider, so that we could assure essential services will always be available to people in Fort Fairfield, without requiring them to have to travel to another town or city to receive care,” said Foster.Pines Health Services, a division of Cary Medical Center,
was the successful bidder to provide the health care services at the clinic
once it is built. As ground is being broke for the senior citizen housing, the health clinic will be going out to bid. Bid opening for that project is August 30 at 2pm. In addition to the town’s receipt of developer’s fee from MSHA, a Community Development Block grant will be used to cover the rest of the expected cost of the clinic, so there is expected to be no significant input from local taxpayer revenue. The health care provider at the clinic will then lease the building from the town under terms and conditions applicable to its usage. The senior citizens housing project is expected to be completed sometime around August of next year, and if the clinic project goes as planned, it will be ready for business shortly thereafter. In addition to servicing those living at the senior complex, the health center will also be open to anyone else in Fort Fairfield who chooses to utilize their services.
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