Kerikeri Retirement Village has started consultation with its residents and other groups and people in the wider community about a plan to build retirement and lifestyle apartments on property it acquired some time ago at 127 Kerikeri Road, the former Enz of the Earth property.
The two-storey apartment complex will be Kerikeri’s first. It will contain 30 one and two-bedroom apartments, including three larger ‘premium’ two-bed units. If the project proceeds construction will take place in two stages; the first 14 apartments will be ready for occupation by October 2018 and the rest will be built by 2019.
The village is a charitable trust, governed by members of the Kerikeri community. All profits are ploughed back into its operation, maintenance and development. Its board of trustees says the project is necessary to service the growing and changing need for the village’s services by people from both Kerikeri and surrounding Mid and Far North communities.
The Village supports the Care Facility and will enable a re-build and expansion over the coming years.
Kerikeri Retirement Village chief executive Hilary Sumpter said the retirement living and aged care sector was changing rapidly. People were living longer and were more active for longer. And society’s expectations of what the elderly can and should do with retirement were becoming less conservative and restricted.
“All this adds up to mean that retirement communities are changing from being places where Mum and Dad went to live when they became too frail to look after themselves, to places where people go earlier in order to make the most of their well-earned retirements,” Ms Sumpter said.
She said Kerikeri Retirement Village was managing this change by meeting demand for apartment-style living, alongside other styles of accommodation.
“Our existing apartments and cottages have served us well for many years but they are not sufficient to meet the growing and changing demand,” she said.
The complex has been designed to look more like a large house than a typical block of apartments. The units themselves will be light, warm and relatively spacious, featuring the latest trends in design, fittings and furnishings.
They will range in size from around 50 square meters to about 110 square meters. These are on the larger size for retirement communities and are larger than the current studio apartment offering of 35 square meters for the Kerikeri Retirement Village’s existing Wendywood apartments, and between 75 square meters and 170 square meters for its cottages.
The building will be constructed with tilt-slab concrete and the external areas will feature a number of design features.
Solar power is being considered, along with lighting and heating technologies that will deliver the greatest efficiencies and the lowest environmental footprint.
The consultation process will last for several weeks and all input will be considered by the board of trustees. Construction is scheduled to start towards the end of October.
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