In early 2010, Enderby was offered one of the Olympic Legacy projects and they accepted the project, which would give Enderby a building that would accommodate 15 tenants composed of people with disability or low-income seniors, in a 410 square foot bachelor suite. The building would be created from the modular housing that was used in Whistler to accommodate Olympic athletes. Eight of these “trailers” would be fitted together on 2 stories with an elevator at one end and a large common area of the other, including an office and laundry room. The project started in March of 2010 and was ready to move into on April 1, 2011. Four candidates who were ready to move in quickly, made the Enderby Memorial Terrace look occupied while the rest of the building and landscaping was completed. By December, the building was completed, landscaped, fully occupied and has been ever since.
In 2012, Enderby Seniors Housing Society began the planning and hard work to complete their real goal of providing Assisted Living to the citizens of Enderby, only now they knew that Supportive Housing was really what was needed, and they had a plan to get that.
Many, many meetings followed but the most important one was with Mr. Ralph Sultan, the government minister in charge of Seniors, who encouraged the society to keep working hard and he would help the new rookie Member of the Legislature, Greg Kyllo, to work with the government departments to see if the new project could be brought to fruition. Many phone calls, meeting and emails later, Enderby Seniors Housing received a phone call from Danna Locke of BC Housing to say there was a request for proposals and the society should get their proposal in to them.
Many more meetings and plans and budgets and we now have our Supportive Housing facility, called Enderby Memorial Tower, with construction being started on April 18, 2017.
A Brief History
In 2006, when the Interior Health Authority decided to close the Enderby Memorial Hospital and move the services to Vernon and Salmon Arm hospitals, a small group of people from Enderby created the Enderby housing cooperative society. This group invited other concerned citizens to join with a small membership fee. Soon there were many people who joined the co-op and began organizing to create an assisted living facility from the old building.
It was very quickly determined that the old building would cost far too much to be upgraded to make it useable, so the group started to plan to build a new facility on the old hospital grounds. After a major study of needs and demands and a construction budget were worked through, it was determined that the operation could not meet the mortgage needs and the society was disbanded.
Several business people from the community decided to form another society, Enderby Seniors Housing Society, with the intention of building an assisted living facility on the old hospital grounds after the hospital had been demolished and the grounds brought back to being useful for a new building. Among these society members were Patrick Stroulger, Peter Gilowski, Patricia Vetter, Eric Borhaven, and Tony Vetter.
The society received its Charter as an incorporated society August 14, 2008. Pat Stroulger and other members met with several officials from BC Housing Corporation to determine the possibility of getting a project to create the assisted living facility. Budgets were prepared, proposals were made, and many discussions took place with officials from the city of Enderby, Regional District of North Okanagan, BC Housing, government ministries, and the federal government.
