20 January 2025
A year and a half after a fire broke out on the third floor of Silvera’s Mountview Apartments, all the damaged floors have been restored.
The July 2023 fire at the seven-storey independent seniors building in northeast Calgary sent four residents to hospital and rendered 31 suites across three floors unlivable.
Repairing the smoke and water damage at the building, which is owned by the Government of Alberta and operated by Silvera, required relocating the affected residents while their suites were assessed, cleaned and restored.
“Mountview was built in 1978, meaning we had to remediate asbestos and hazardous materials, which resulted in shutting down resident access to the entire third floor for the duration of the project,” says Jairo Rodriguez, Project Manager at Silvera.
Working through insurance, structural, electrical and mechanical inspections, the scope of work plan and construction approvals took some time.
The result, however, was a highly improved building, with new paint, flooring, light fixtures, kitchen cupboards, sinks and appliances in the suites that were damaged.
“We were able to upgrade 70 per cent of suites with new kitchen cabinets and also replace old bathroom fixtures,” says Jairo.
Residents moved to temporary housing during fire restoration
The greatest challenge was moving residents to temporary housing. Many of them were relocated to Silvera’s Bridgeland supportive living communities of Aspen and Spruce, while others moved to units on other floors of the Mountview complex.
Janice Sinclair has lived at Mountview for 25 years. Her suite had some water damage in her hall, storage room and kitchen. She recalls having to get down three flights of stairs with the help of a firefighter on the day of the fire, which was difficult with a cane and bad knees. She stayed with her daughter for six weeks before returning to a different apartment at Mountview. However, she preferred her original suite and asked to return to it once it was ready.
“I wanted to move back to my place – I like my neighbours, I know everybody on my floor and I’m very happy about the upgrades,” she says. “What’s not to like?”
After the fire, Denis Hollands, a 10-year Mountview resident, temporarily moved to Aspen. “It was far more than I expected – they took me in, gave me a room with a TV, fed me three square meals a day for a month. Silvera treated me in an excellent manner.” He returned to Mountview to another suite on a different floor where he spent the better part of a year. He too moved back to his original apartment late last summer when renovations were complete.
“When I came back after the restoration, I had new appliances, flooring and paint,” he says. “What’s more, they went to great extremes to improve the common spaces for us and did a fantastic job.”
While construction crews were in the building, they upgraded and modernized common gathering places in the building, including an updated kitchen, TV room, laundry room and public washrooms, with new furniture, bathroom fixtures, paint, energy efficient lighting and more resilient flooring.
“We had a good opportunity to make these upgrades while the trades were already at the building, so we overlapped the end of suite construction with the start of the common areas,” Jairo says. The last countertop was installed before Christmas.
“It was a nice way to tell residents that we care about them, and we recognize they’ve been through a lot,” says Jairo. “We wanted to do what we could to make their lives a bit better. It was a nice cherry on top of the renovation.”