Oceania to spend $85m on Trevellyn redevelopment
Tuesday, 13 February 2018
One of Hamilton's best known aged-care facilities is set for a major redevelopment.
Trevellyn Care and Village in Victoria St is in stage one of an $85 million redevelopment that will bring it up to modern standards and significantly expand what it offers to residents onsite.
Trevellyn began as one of Hamilton's grand old homesteads in the area of land between the Fairfield Bridge and MacDairmid Rd to the north. It was named Trevellyn by Bill and Hilda Hume, who bought the property in 1906.
The property was on-sold to Presbyterian Support in 1954 and in the following year converted into a 12-bed rest home opened by Hamilton MP Hilda Ross.
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It was bought by Oceania Healthcare in 2005. Oceania, listed on the New Zealand and Australian Stock Exchanges, is the third largest provider of aged-care and assisted-living facilities in New Zealand.
It owns and operates 51 sites around the country including facilities in Cambridge, Paeroa and Tokoroa. Trevellyn in Hamilton is its largest Waikato facility with more than 100 beds and its associated Woodlands retirement village complex.
Oceania Healthcare chief executive Earl Gasparich said the company had listed on the New Zealand stock exchange in May 2017 to raise $200 million towards developing its nationwide 'brownfields' landbank.
'We are an industry leader in aged-care and an experienced developer of aged-care and retirement villages. Our portfolio is weighted more towards aged-care than other providers with 70 per cent of our current offering in aged-care beds.
'Overall we have 2900 aged-care beds and 1000 retirement units. This will expand to over 5300 beds and retirement village units as we redevelop our sites and build out our brownfields landbank.
'We want to be able to rebuild what is old and past its economic life into new facilities suitable to the needs of today's retirees.'
Gasparich said Trevellyn was Oceania's flagship in Hamilton and due to its large scale, the facility would continue to fully operate while the first-stage care facility was being redeveloped.
'We're fortunate to have a 2.4 hectare area. We will build 43 larger 36-square-metre care suites and 47 smaller 23sqm care suites. We can build on our surplus space without having to disrupt the existing facility which will continue to operate throughout the redevelopment.'
The redevelopment began on the south end of the site in January and stage one is scheduled to be completed by August 2019.
Stage two will comprise a further 133 apartments and a significant 1400sqm community centre which is planned to be completed by 2022 and brings the total investment on site to $85m.
'Across the country we have land banked sufficient for an additional 1400 beds and units to be added to our portfolio. We are building 360 units now and have already completed 127 this financial year.'
Gasparich said aged-care is traditionally a government-funded service where providers are contracted to district health boards. However the sector is going through a transformation with rapidly increasing numbers of retirees and demand for better accommodation and services, he said.
'The level of service and facility required is quite different from what was acceptable 20 years ago. The demand for quality is a key change in aged-care.
'A large proportion of the national stock of aged-care beds were built 30 to 40 years ago and very little has been built in between times because the level of funding from Government has not been sufficient to incentivise providers to build completely new facilities.
'As a result the larger providers are rebuilding their existing facilities using the retirement village model and other private charges to justify the cost of construction.'