It’s a project that will help the Renfrew County Paramedic Service better serve the southwestern portion of the county.
Renovations have begun at the former O’Grady’s Garage building in Eganville that will transform the structure into a new ambulance base.
The paramedic service has had a site in Eganville for the past 20 years, sharing space in the Bonnechere Valley municipal building, but this new base was a logical move, explains Renfrew County Paramedic Chief Michael Nolan.
“For many years we’ve been looking for opportunities to have a space that meets the needs from the paramedic service perspective and Bonnechere Valley has been great to provide us some space within the municipal building. But when the O’Grady property became available on the market, which dates back almost a year now, we really saw it as an opportunity to have some fairly predictable costs, being a renovation as opposed to a new build. And in the current market of new build costs, the renovation made a lot of sense,” he said.
Nolan said the paramedic service has been working with the development and property department on the project and they have been able to take occupancy, complete an engineering evaluation and ensure the infrastructure is robust. Internal renovations have begun on both the office space and in the garage, he explained.
The new base will offer plenty of benefits.
“It’s a larger footprint than we’ve currently been occupying, which allows us to bring all of our vehicles indoors. We had run vehicles seasonally at the municipal building because we weren’t able to park additional vehicles indoors in winter months so by now being able to get all of our ambulances and community paramedic response units under one roof, that’s a great benefit,” said Nolan.
The new base allows the paramedic service to move some additional equipment, as well as the Sierra (remote access) team, from Renfrew and Pembroke both, to the Eganville location to be able to better serve the area.
The hope is to be up and running by June.
“We’re targeting the end of June, latest, to be fully operational out of that space and I’m hoping that we’ll be able to start to transition there in May and June so we’re really looking forward to that and also a good time of the year as cottagers and our call volume tends to increase in that part of the county,” said Nolan.
(Written by Sherry Haaima)