City of Brantford Council approved a request for additional funding for the John Noble Home Bell Court redevelopment project during the regular Council meeting on Tuesday, June 24, 2025.
Bell Court is a unit in the John Noble Home that has been vacant for many years. The redevelopment of Bell Court started back in 2019 as a ten long-term bed addition to the current 156-bed facility, however, it was expanded to 40-beds in 2023.
Raquel Diez Salinas, Director of Finances for the John Noble Home, told councillors that “the original budget had changed a few times; at the beginning it was $23 million, and it later became $27 million [by the time] the City and the County approved the project.”
This past March, both City and County councils learned that the total budget for the expansion had increased by $1.6 million, bringing the cost to up to $29,934,734.
During the June 24 meeting, City Councillor Linda Hunt, vice-chair of the board for the John Noble Home, said that things had changed once they got shovels in the ground.
“We found out that we needed to, in order to be a fire code, spend almost a million dollars on a sprinkler system,” she said. “Then we got into roofing, and if you’ve ever put an addition on your house, it’s the unseen things that cost the money. We had asbestos remediation and we’ve had a number of unforeseen circumstances that have, yes, had delay claims, but have also had additional expenses related to them.”
Now, an additional funding request of $902,248 (the City’s share being $651,423) has been made to address unforeseen costs, and brings the new total project cost to $30,836,982. If approved, the City’s total commitment to the project should be around $18.6 million.
Anna Gora, Acting Administrator for the John Noble Home, explained that part of the reason they were requesting more funds was because of extra costs for furniture, fixtures and equipment as well as various change orders. As well, they originally thought they would be getting an extra $250,000 grant from the province, however because they had already received it once before, they would not get it again.
“If the cost is currently at $30 million, that’s a 30 per cent overrun so far,” said Councillor Dan McCreary. “So per unit cost is three quarters of a million dollars per room, per resident?”
Diez Salinas said that the cost wasn’t just going towards the 40 beds for long-term care, but six additional beds for the facility’s Day and Stay program, as well as the sprinkler system and various upgrades to the building.
Hunt later said that despite the rise in cost, Council was missing the good news.
“The provincial government is making an investment in 40 new long-term care beds in our community, and that, in and of itself, is something to be celebrated. There is a significant shortage of long-term care beds, and if you want to relate that to the hospital, a lot of the time the reason you cannot get a bed in the hospital is because they’re being taken up by people that need to be in long-term care,” she said. “So the Day and Stay program is, for lack of a better word, an outpatient program. So it’s for someone that is still able to remain at home but does need the support and services that are provided in a long-term care environment. All of these are good news stories.”
In the end, the City Council unanimously approved the additional $651,423.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
