Wood Buffalo Housing and Development Corporation, Willow Square

The Wood Buffalo Housing and Development Corporation recently held a Willow Square engagement session in order to allow the public to get information and ask questions, and the crowd was emotional during the meeting held at the Sawridge Inn on Monday. The former Willow Square lands are still vacant, and the municipally owned developer who is in charge of the project shared the plan’s early concepts at the event. The proposal that was unveiled will include a senior facility, residential space, and retail space so that social housing, affordable housing, opportunities for seniors, and marketing can all occur in the same space.

Mike Evans, the presenter at the Willow Square engagement session scheduled by the Wood Buffalo Housing and Development Corporation , said “Wood Buffalo (Housing) accepted the stewardship of this parcel of land to facilitate the construction in this community of an Aging in Place facility for seniors. It’s not financially viable as a project that’s exclusive for seniors on this site. There’s an opportunity to meet the needs of seniors as they’ve been expressed in this community for a number of years, but also to provide some complementary development that would provide benefits to seniors, but also the community at large.” According to Bryan Lutes, the president of WBHDC, “At this point we’re still looking at what the whole site will look at. The purpose of the needs assessment are to say, what the gaps are in the community and what of those gaps we can accommodate on the site. Once we have that we’ll be able to determine what the site’s going to look like.”