THE quest to bring a retirement village and up to 80 nursing home beds to Gloucester has moved forward with an agreement to sell Anglican Care Gloucester Shire Council's block on Clement Street, near the hospital.
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“It’s very good news, we’re very pleased to reach that milestone. Now we can start to address the design specifications to get a development application to council,” Anglican Care CEO Colin Osborne said.
The not for profit organisation will start working on those plans from scratch, having already looked over plans made by Nambucca Valley Care prior to Anglican Care being awarded the 60 bed licence from Gloucester Hospital’s aged care facilities.
“The style of project was not consistent with what we would do,” Mr Osborne said.
“We’re still in the process of engaging consultants and architects. I would imagine the earliest we could get a DA to council would be three or four months.”
“There are a number of aspects that we would capitalise on, including the wonderful view.”
The development application will encompass the entire site, from nursing beds to the retirement village. Once it has been approved by council, Anglican Care will determine whether or not the retirement village units can be brought forward, or whether they will need to be build concurrently with the rest of the site.
“We are certainly not in a position to confirm that at this point in time. Rest assured, we will start construction of the nursing home in July or August 2017. There’s alot of time that is invested in a building site, with in-ground works before buildings start appearing.”
The facility will be finished before the end of 2018, with Mr Osborne estimating the nursing home taking 14 months to construct.
While he would not be drawn on how many retirement units would be in the offing, he said he hoped to increase the number of units proposed by Nambucca’s plan “a little bit.”
In terms of increasing the aged care bed licence from 60 to 80, he said that they were in the process of making the appropriate applications.
Anglican Care is planning on holding another community forum in April, with the date yet to be confirmed.
“We want to update the community and reinforce what we’re looking at. We’re also very interested in getting some market research feedback from people who are potentially interested in the retirement village units. We want to do that reasonably quickly to incorporate the information into our planning.”
While the sale price of the property remains undisclosed, Mayor John Rosenbaum said Anglican Care will cover the costs incurred by the property sale, and that it was great to see the land go towards its intended purpose.
“I’m very pleased to see it’s going to happen.”
He said its close proximity with the hospital will help retain the latter as a valuable asset to be maintained within the community.