by the

Rob Perry of The Aylmer Express

Starting a major building project just before a pandemic starts is not something Chris Streib would recommend.

He and his partner Jake Zacharias own 424 Talbot St.

W. in Aylmer, part of a condominium complex known as the Aylmer Medical Centre, and now have added another.

The 424 building formerly housed Talbot Trail Physiotherapy and still is home to East Elgin Family Health Team and other, smaller offices.

Earlier this year, Talbot Trail finally moved into a new home at 426 Talbot St. W., what was now the southernmost building in the medical centre, more than two years after construction began and after the cost of construction escalated by 30% due to material and labour shortages.

Mr. Streib and Mr. Zacharias first acquired what was then the entire medical centre property from the Town of Aylmer about 10 years ago, with two buildings at the front.

One had a pharmacy and a chiropractor, and the other doctors’ offices and Talbot Trail. The physiotherapy business had already been there for almost 10 years, so when the town decided to sell the medical centre, the purchase made sense, since Talbot Trail was the largest tenant in the building, Chris said.

A new 12,000 square-foot building then went up behind the other two, with the address of 424 Talbot St. W., which housed Talbot Trail, a dental practice, a nurse-practitioner and, downstairs, spaces for other service providers and agencies.

At the time they’d acquired the centre, the East Elgin Family Health Team was just being formed, and deciding on where it should be situated.

Mr. Streib said they took on the project of renovating space in the 424 building to provide a home for the team, which at the time was made up of four physicians.

Talbot Trail moved temporarily to the basement of 424, while renovations were under way on the ground floor. After the family health team moved in, remaining space on the ground floor was then renovated and Talbot Trail moved back upstairs.

The Family Health Team is the biggest tenant in 424, with a blood-testing lab downstairs along with Southwestern Public Health, a nurse-practitioner, and a diabetes education clinic.

The two buildings at the front, nearest Talbot Street West, are now condominiums owned by the tenants, including in the larger one Aylmer Family Dental, which had grown to encompass five of the six available units there.

After the newest 6,000 square-foot building at 426 was finally completed earlier this year, Talbot Trail moved over to occupy half of that. Plans for 426 were hatched over the course of 2019, and actual work started with scraping off top soil in early February and March of 2020.

Then the pandemic hit, and nothing happened for a long time due to public health emergency orders and business shutdowns.

Work finally got rolling again in the late spring of 2021. Meanwhile, Talbot Trail moved out of 424 in July and went instead to the Imperial Hall at East Elgin Community Complex, to better deal with public health mandates.

A planned four-month stay there dragged on into eight, though “The arena space actually worked out really well.”

Not many vacant 2,000 square-foot spaces were available to rent in Aylmer otherwise, he added, and the Complex in turn had no customers for its hall.

Talbot Trail was happy, though, to move into their new space in the 426 building in late spring of this year.

Talbot Trail now had 10 private treatment rooms, Chris said, and another handful of open beds.

The workspace was designed to allow staff to flow through it as smoothly as possible.

At the Complex, staff members who kept track of their steps sometimes would record as many at 10,000 in a morning.

Chris said they had potential new tenants interested in the other half of the space at 426, and they were open to anything along health care lines, such as optometry, audiology and similar businesses.

Getting the space ready for a new tenant wouldn’t be difficult, he believed. All the services were already roughed in, so minimal electrical and plumbing work should be needed to prepare it for occupancy.

Past experience renovating a dozen physiotherapy clinic spaces for Talbot Trail over the last 20 years had really helped, but the experience was still daunting.

The price of lumber, for example, almost tripled from the time they started to build and when they were done.

They didn’t have much trouble finding subcontractors, which he credited to using local trades.

The original target was to have Talbot Trail into 426 by September of 2020, but the move didn’t happen until April of 2022.

As a result of such complications, the cost of 426 was 30% higher than originally expected.

They were also looking for a standalone operation to occupy Talbot Trail’s former space in 424, whether that mean additional space if needed by the Family Health Team or tenants now in the lower part of the building.

As for tackling another new building or renovating an existing one, “Never say never,” but Chris was content with the spaces he had now.

He said 426 filled in the medical centre property nicely.

“Aylmer, for the size of it, has a lot of services in it now to complement the Family Health Team,” he added. The centre was particularly useful for seniors, in that all services were on the ground floor in three of the buildings, and the basement in 424 was served by an elevator.