 This operation was amalgamated with a Calgary company to form VillaCentres Limited.The newly combined company built nine nursing homes across the country and controlled the Park Plaza Hotel, in downtown Toronto.In the 1970s, when Cape Breton's economy was starting to unravel, with the Sydney Steel Corporation shedding jobs, and the coal mines around Industrial Cape Breton being slowly shutdown by DEVCO, Schwartz tried to help Cape Breton's economy by investing in diverse businesses that were outside of the traditional heavy-industrial types that were the norm at the time, for example, seafood farming.