The Salvation Army is selling the Bethany Hope Centre, pictured, and the land surrounding it. Giacomo Panico/CBC

A plan to build a complex for affordable housing, community health and social services in Hintonburg will require a commitment from local and provincial government in the next three months, say the project's leaders.

A group of community partners, including the Somerset West Community Health Centre, met with the public Monday night to lay out the plan for "The Hintonburg Hub."

The proposed facility would be built on the land where the Bethany Hope Centre currently stands, as well as the land that surrounds it.

The Salvation Army is moving out of the centre after 98 years and selling off part of the area around it, though the church intends to retain the adjacent Grace Manor, a long-term care facility it owns.

Jack McCarthy, the executive director of the Somerset West Community Health Centre, said the community groups are in negotiations with the Salvation Army to buy the Bethany Hope Centre property.

McCarthy says the groups are also asking the City of Ottawa and the Ontario provincial government to help secure the financing needed to buy the property. He hopes the money can be secured by July.

"If we can't make a deal before the summer starts, it will be very difficult to make a deal after that," said McCarthy, who says the Salvation Army needs the funds from their property sale for other developments and wouldn't be able to push negotiations past the summer.

The groups behind the plan asked people at the meeting to contact Mayor Jim Watson, local councillor Katherine Hobbs and provincial officials to urge support for the plan.

A diverse mix of families, twenty-somethings and the elderly attended the meeting to learn more about the plans, but none who addressed the planners spoke out against it.

"I'm a senior, the closer all these services are to us, the better for us," said Joanne Lovitt, who lives on Wellington Street near to the proposed site.

At least one community member at the meeting wondered if three months was enough of a window to bring the financing together.

But Tim Simboli, the head of the Family Service Centre of Ottawa-Carleton and another partner in the project, remained optimistic that support for the project would build as people saw the plan.

"It's not just a matter of you talking your elected officials, but you talking to your neighbours, and really supporting this as a community. That's the part that's really going to make it happen," said Simboli.

The Hintonburg Community Association has publicly stated its support for the plan in principal but said it is committed to preserving the Bethany Hope Centre exterior and has formally requested the City of Ottawa consider the building for designation under the Ontario Heritage Act.