Eastcliffe Retirement Village 2001
As of 2010, Ngati Whatua o Orakei has full ownership of the Eastcliffe Retirement Village after having been partners in this venture for over 10 years, so we know the business model works well. We now have a solid asset and there is potential to expand further at Eastcliffe and also consider building more retirement villages. Our financial return on investment to date has been excellent.
History
The land at Orakei set aside for this retirement village development, comprising three hectares, is part of the development land on the papakainga as described in the 1991 Orakei Act.
The Act provides that a maximum of 20% of the papakainga estate can be effectively leased for non-hapu housing/commercial purposes.
in 1998, Ngati Whatua sought to build a high quality sustainable residential business on leasehold tenure, and after much research settled on a retirement village concept.
Ngati Whatua then selected a Joint Venture partner in a closed tender process.
The resulting Joint Venture firstly constructed on a permitted activity basis, a 67-apartment plus 28-hospital bed rest-home facility of 6,000 m 2 floor area on three levels.
Construction of the project commenced in October 1999 and this facility was opened in 2001.
During that same period the Joint Venture commenced a lengthy process to obtain approval on a fully notifiedbasis, to develop more intensively, Parts Two and Three of this land.
As of right we could have built 40 town-houses, but after a protracted process we were given permission to build 68 townhouses, prior to being heard in the environment court.
As of December 2008, we have built and sold on a ‘licence to occupy’ basis 90% of these townhouses.
We have now established a second Joint Venture with this party to build a retirement village in East Auckland.
The particular site was zoned to allow for an 80 unit development. We have obtained approval to increase it to a 380-unit site and plan to commence building in 2009.
At Eastcliffe Orakei, all units are fully let, and we have a waiting list.
During the earlier years we encouraged our General Manager to enter into the New Zealand Manager of the Year awards for retirement villages. In the two successive years she entered, she won first place.