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J UNE 2017 | 89 Shepherd's Gardens Heritage Seniors Centre PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY PGA ARCHITECTS Shepherd's Gardens Heritage Seniors Centre by PETER STENNING LOCATION 109 Street NW, Edmonton, Alberta OWNER/DEVELOPER Shepherd's Care Foundation ARCHITECT PGA Architects GENERAL CONTRACTOR Manshield Construction STRUCTURAL CONSULTANT Magela Expert Inc. MECHANICAL CONSULTANT Bacz Engineering Inc. ELECTRICAL CONSULTANT Concept Engineering GEOTECHNICAL CONSULTANT Shelby Engineering BUILDING ENVELOPE CONSULTANT Pancon Engineering Limited CIVIL CONSULTANT V3 Company of Canada Ltd. TOTAL SIZE 213,635 square feet TOTAL COST $49.5 million C onvenience and peace of mind: those were the main goals in the development of the Shepherd's Gardens Heritage Seniors Centre, a 136-unit high-rise condominium in Edmonton, Alberta. And although the interior living units with their stainless steel appliances and tile, along with the bold horizontal lines defining the building's exterior match the quality of any for-market condo project thanks to the attention to detail provided by PGA Architects, Shepherd's Care Foundation was primarily mindful that residents would feel safe and protected – as well as have plenty of places to visit outside of their own suites. In order to provide comprehensive care to seniors, Shepherd's Gardens is augmented by a 53-bed extended care facility name Eden House; PGA principal Chris Laing says this facility's living units were designed "to feel like a home in which the elderly might have lived in their community." Arguably, Shepherd's Gardens was made possible due to the success of a high-rise condominium attached to the Millwoods Campus Building that Shepherd's Care Foundation built in 2009. Taking lessons learned from that facility and spurred by the need for similar accommodations, the society engaged PGA so that the new seniors centre would feature cutting edge "better living" design principles. Functional site location was crucial: the 15-storey senior's centre and the eight-storey Eden House are located next to the Southside Pentecostal Assembly, only blocks away from the Century Park LRT station, and one train stop away from Southgate Centre. Grocery stores, banks and myriad services are all within easy walking distance. In combining the senior's centre with the Eden House, it was decided by the owners and architects early on that Eden would have its own entrance – this would mean health care could be available to tenants in their own home if required. Common areas were carefully developed and located within the facility; they include a showcase lobby, a game room and craft room, open spaces and sitting areas for reading and meeting, plus a seventh floor dining room with panoramic views of downtown Edmonton. As an added touch of convenience, guest suites were created for out of town friends and family. The most notable aspect of Eden House is that it was designed as a de-institutionalized project and a total re-imagining of a nursing facility – meaning that the standard architectural model, organizational configuration, staffing patterns and philosophy of care were fundamentally changed. In their place was a facility of small units with a full range of personal care and clinical services normally found in high-quality nursing homes. Providing a sense of independence in Eden House was key, and as such no more than nine elders are located per floor. Other Eden design features include hearth areas combining the living room with a full glass curtain wall, dining room, and open kitchen; dining room with table that seats the elders, the caring staff, and two guests; private bedrooms, each with a bathroom and locked medicine cabinet; enclosed outdoor space; and visual sight lines from the kitchen to the hearth area and bathrooms. Manshield Construction's work on the design-build project was scheduled for a 30 month period, starting in 2014, and the steel building structure benefitted significantly from the use of a Hambro MD2000 floor system, a composite girder and a transfer slab system from Canam, all of which can be combined in order to maximize the functionality of multi-residential buildings. The MD2000 system utilizes steel deck as a permanent form that does not require stripping, allowing it to be quickly available for other trades. This system is ideal for multi-storey buildings consisting of conventional structural steel frame because it enables the concrete pouring of more than one floor at a time. Construction work also consisted of a two level underground, 80,000- square-foot steel parkade; the entire building was clad with panelized exterior wall from Durabond. Construction was uneventful, except for dust bowl conditions created by Manshield being obliged to dig 10 metres into an adjacent park, in order to build a protective safety barrier and prevent a potentially dangerous two-storey drop into the construction site; the park was fully restored in the spring of 2015. With the facility completed in 2016, Shepherd's Care Foundation promptly began a successful marketing campaign, referring to Shepherd's Gardens Heritage Seniors Centre as "the only independent living condo that adapts to your changing needs" and a place "where you can age-in-place." A 780-352-1780 | 5505 - 50 Avenue | Wetaskiwin, AB | T9A 2E9 Proud to be part of the Shepherd's Gardens Heritage Project! Congratulations to the whole team on another successful project. Architects.indd 1 2017-05-26 8:59 AM bacz Engineering.indd 1 2017-05-15 11:13

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