reception, meanwhile, included a piano lounge, the main kitchen, laundry services, break rooms for staff, as well as office space. “That was our first experience in the long-term care sector,” Brandon says, “and it went very, very well.” It went so well, in fact, that S.J.Lawrence is currently working with Southbridge on another couple designs for future projects – projects that would be in Port Hope and Goderich, which would mean branching out beyond Ottawa, which is an exciting prospect for the practice. Prior to that project, S.J.Lawrence hadn’t actually worked with Southbridge before. According to Shawn, “they had done a little bit of homework and saw that we had experience with retirement homes in the area, so they reached out to us to discuss their Kemptville site.” “We walked through the site together, we walked them through some of our previous projects, and they were happy with what they saw,” Shawn says. “We were fortunate to get that project, they were really happy with the service and the quality of the build, and now we’ve created a really healthy working relationship with them.” Moving forward, S.J.Lawrence’s goal is to continue fostering repeat relationships like Southbridge, and to continue designing long-term-care facilities for them all over Ontario. Shawn and Brandon also want to continue doing projects of other scales and typologies and to generally stay diverse. They are increasingly active in the mid-rise residential market, for example, and they want to keep that momentum going. They would also like to keep working on some large-scale commercial jobs. JULY 2023
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