Less than 20 years since the project began, the Niverville Heritage Centre’s aging-in-place model is complete. The Heritage Centre includes seniors housing options that range from fully independent life lease suites to personal care home units and everything in between.
“The growth has come to an end at the Heritage Centre because the lot has been filled,” says Tom Schmitke, chairperson of the Niverville Heritage Holdings Inc (NHHI) board. “Everything that can be built there as far as buildings go is there.”
With no further growth and development in mind, the NHHI board of directors, along with the executive team of Steve Neufeld, Wes Hildebrand, and Robert Manchulenko, recognized a need to restructure upper management to better reflect the changing vision of the facility.
Since Neufeld’s role over the past many years included developing a vision for the centre’s future, the group agreed that his position would be terminated. Neufeld resigned in June of this year.
“It was the collapse of the [seniors housing and daycare] project in St. Adolphe that began to make it clear that my tenure in Community and Development [at the Heritage Centre] would be coming to an end, perhaps sooner than I expected,” Neufeld says. “Coupling [that] with the fact that I am turning 58 this year and experience relatively good health and energy, it made sense that now was the right time to move on, in spite of not having a clear career path going forward.”
Since Neufeld’s resignation, Hildebrand has been appointed the sole CEO position of the Heritage Centre, overseeing all of the current lower management positions. A position of Operations Manager has been created for Manchulenko. Both Hildebrand and Manchulenko will be assuming the aspects of Neufeld’s portfolio that will be required for the ongoing management of the various facilities within the Heritage Centre.
This new structure, Schmitke says, is in line with NHHI’s mission to be fiscally responsible in these tight economic times.
“Finances come into play on everything,” Schmitke says, adding that provincial funding for the PCH has levelled off in the past few years, with no funding increases in sight. “We don’t know when that may change and it’s a little bit harder to provide the same level of services when the costs keep going up but the income is frozen, so we’ve had to adjust.”
Neufeld’s interest in the Heritage Centre began when it was still in its dream stages. As a town councillor in 2002, he participated in the development of the master site plan and operating budget, the mission and vision of the facility, as well as the capital fundraising campaign.
Two years later, as the project got underway, Neufeld applied for and was awarded the position of Chief Operating Officer. In 2017, he accepted the position of Chief Officer for Community and Development as well as Executive Director of the PCH.
“While the Heritage Centre project has been an incredible career journey for me, it has been my personal prayer for a couple of years that if there was another journey that God wanted my wife Helga and I to be on, that he would put us on that path,” Neufeld says. “While I had been sensing a change would be in the offing, I just wasn’t sure what the timing would be on that.”
The past few months have provided Neufeld with time to contemplate where his ambitions will take him, but he’s confident they’ll include a focus on using the skills he’s developed at the Heritage Centre to partner with non-profit organizations that work towards transformational change in areas of societal need.
A few opportunities, he says, have already come his way. Because of his volunteer work with Finding Freedom, a Winnipeg-based addictions treatment centre, he’s been offered the role of campaign co-chairperson for another organization working towards developing an addictions and mental health treatment centre.
As well, another organization has invited Neufeld to join them in their mission to develop a gang exit program, a video series on complex trauma targeted at high school students, and the development of entry-level housing for the homeless.
On top of that, Neufeld has recently revived a consulting business he ran years earlier. His goal is to work alongside small business owners who need assistance in marketing and development.
“What I have found over years of running my own business, private businesses for others, and of course social enterprise with the Heritage Centre,” Neufeld says, “is that when the pressure is on and the walls seem to be closing in, it is very difficult for those responsible for the business to focus their efforts on ongoing business growth when they have so much on their plates.”
Schmitke agrees that this is an area that would lend itself well to Neufeld’s strengths.
“Steve is very good at [business consulting],” Schmitke says. “He’s got a lot of connections and he has the drive and the passion for it.”
While the Heritage Centre management team is being scaled back, Schmitke says that the NHHI board hopes to gain a few new members in the coming months. Currently, four members sit on that board, including Schmitke, Randy Baldwin, Terry Carruthers, and Sandy Wallace.
Very recently, the board had to say farewell to Nancy Finlayson and Kathy Neyedley, leaving them a few members short of their minimum six- to seven-member ideal. Schmitke says the positions are strictly volunteer with no remuneration, although he adds that it doesn’t require a significant time commitment.
“It’s not all that difficult,” Schmitke says. “It’s just to help guide and direct the [Heritage Centre] management to make sure that the facility remains focused on the community and not just to make a profit.”
