The site of Iroquois Falls’ former paper mill is set to become a logistics hub for a $1.8-billion hospital development set to kick off in Moosonee and Moose Factory this fall.
Abitibi Connex, the name given to the site when it was launched by BMI Group earlier this year, has been chosen by Pomerleau Healthcare Partners as the staging ground to move construction materials north, with Pinnacle Logistics Solutions managing their transport.
In the works for well over a decade, the Weeneebayko Area Health Authority (WAHA) redevelopment project involves the construction of a 419,311-square-foot health-care campus that will include a 36-bed acute care hospital with 100 per cent private rooms, a 24-hour emergency department, and modern surgical suites; a 32-bed long-term Elder care lodge; staff residences; a patient and family hostel; and an ambulatory care clinic, to be located in Moose Factory.
The state-of-the-art hospital will serve roughly 12,000 people living in the region, replacing the crumbling health-care infrastructure that currently serves the James Bay and Hudson Bay coastal communities.
Federal funding of $1.2 billion for the project was confirmed in 2024, and Pomerleau was announced as the builder last fall.
Activity at the former mill site will ramp up through the summer as Pinnacle and Pomerleau get ready for the start of construction this fall.
Some preparation work at the hospital site is taking place now — piles are being driven and the worker camp is being delivered and installed. Construction is expected to get underway this fall, and the hospital is slated to be complete and ready to receive patients by 2030.
Securing the first tenant at Abitibi Connex is a big step forward for BMI Group, which has owned the former Resolute Forest Products mill site since 2016 and spent years cleaning up the property for future use.
“We're excited to be able to announce that Pinnacle and Pomerleau have come to site, and we will be a link in the chain for the project in WAHA,” said John Veldman, BMI’s chief operating officer.
“What we really want to be is a multi-tenanted site for logistics for multiple projects in the North. So, we're hoping that we can attract 10 to 15 different tenants that are all in the logistics or manufacturing space that can call Iroquois falls home, to really build out the site as a multimodal logistics hub.”
Headquartered in Cambridge, Pinnacle provides custom transport and logistics solutions across industries.
The firm has worked with BMI Group before, at the company’s multimodal site in Thorold, whose anchor tenant is the bio-coal firm Char Technologies, noted Frank DeVries, Pinnacle’s principal and general manager.
On the Weeneebayko health project, Pinnacle began consulting with Pomerleau about two years ago, even before the firm was awarded the construction contract. The project is tricky, DeVries said, because it’s located in a remote area without any road access.
Initially, Pomerleau was considering a site in the Toronto area, because it was close to all their suppliers, potentially keeping transportation costs down. But Pinnacle advised against this.
“One of the critical things that we recognized we needed was a location as close as possible to the construction site, but also accessible to all modes of transportation, where we could consolidate and what we call forward storage,” DeVries said.
“So a place where all the components can be gathered and stored and sequenced for final delivery to the job site. And right away, I thought of BMI’s facility in Iroquois falls, the old Abitibi paper mill.”
The warehouse on site, previously used by the mill to store finished product, was left intact, with loading docks and a rail spur, noted Veldman. Ontario Northland has committed to upgrading 11.5 kilometres of track between Iroquois Falls and Porquis Junction this year. With 90 per cent of the required rehab work completed, the site is ready to go, he added.
For its part, Pinnacle has employed a handful of locals for the job, including the project manager, the foreman, forklift operators and warehouse workers, and there will be more, DeVries said. At the peak of construction, he estimates Pinnacle will be hiring between six and 10 additional people.
“It is definitely our intention to hire local for sure, whether that’s Iroquois Falls, or Cochrane, or Moosonee when that day comes, which is coming soon,” he said.
To celebrate the collaboration, BMI Group will be hosting an open house and barbecue this Friday, July 25, at Abitibi Connex, where members of the public, First Nations leaders and community, project partners and government officials will be welcomed to tour the facility and hear about future plans.
Representatives from J.L. Richards will also be on hand to present a draft of the master plan for the site, which is expected to outline its future development potential.
“The public hasn't been on site for many years,” Veldman said.
“We’d like to … have an open door to look at what can Iroquois Falls look like and build together with all of the stakeholders, and look at the next 10, 20, 30 years of what Iroquois Falls can transform into, since this site was such a large component of the town.”
Veldman has previously said BMI Group sees itself as a community builder, guiding the development process as the community provides input.
But the firm has indicated its interest in building on the area’s agriculture industry, with plans to establish a food distribution hub that would ship fresh food up to remote northern communities via its O’Clay subsidiary.
Since it launched in the spring, Abitibi Connex has also received interest from prospective tenants, although Veldman said confidentiality precluded him from providing too many details.
“We are in talks with a few parties, and one particular one is a fairly large project,” he said.
“I come under a strict NDA (non-disclosure agreement), so I can't disclose the name, but they're really looking hard at the location to build a new facility. And I could say that it's sort of in the emerging technologies.”
Veldman said Ontario and Canada are “on the map globally” as ideal places to develop new tech and how to “use the wood resource in a different way than it’s been used in the past.”
