Hospice approved for old Bushville care home

Planning committee authorizes zoning variance requested by Hospice Miramichi

The Greater Miramichi Regional Service Commission’s planning review and adjustment committee approved a variance for Hospice Miramichi to open a residential palliative care facility at 41 Harper Rd. (FREE PRESS PHOTO)

MIRAMICHI • Hospice Miramichi will soon get a new home after receiving approval from planning officials for an end-of-life care facility in a former special care home.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the Greater Miramichi Regional Service Commission’s planning review and adjustment committee unanimously approved a similar-use variance for Hospice Miramichi’s proposed facility at 41 Harper Rd., in the Bushville neighbourhood. The home on the site previously served as the Howe Residence, a 20-bed special care home.

RSC planning services manager Nic O’Dette said the variance is needed to permit “a change in use from a community placement residential facility to a hospice facility on the subject property.”

“The planning committee must determine whether the proposed hospice use is sufficiently similar to or compatible with a use permitted in the residential low-density (R-2) zone in which the subject property is situated,” he said in a report presented to the committee.