Future of Keneperu Hospital
An inner-city botanical oasis, or a chance for a housing developer to make a killing? The fate of the former Kenepuru Hospital grounds will be decided in the next year or so, but in the meantime, dreamers can dream. Tessa Johnstone reports.
For $14 million or near offer – more than 42 hectares of central Porirua City land set in leafy surrounds, 10 minutes’ walk to public transport, shopping and the hospital, quick drive to motorway and soon Transmission Gully.
Comes with speckled history, and new owners could inherit a mix of rundown buildings and tenants including church groups and well- meaning community organisations.
This large swath of land, formerly part of the Kenepuru Hospital grounds, has been offered up to Cook Strait iwi Ngati Toa as part of a Treaty settlement, but runanga chief executive Matiu Rei said it was too soon to speculate on whether they’ll take it. ‘‘ We have to be reasonably sure it’s going to work, that anything we do is going to work,’’ he said.
The group was working with a developer to assess whether it might be a viable investment, Rei confirmed.
A report to iwi members in November said the site could offer economic benefits and employment opportunities for both Ngati Toa and the wider community, though they have until April 2016 to weigh up the case.
In the meantime, the crumbling buildings are being used for everything from physical rehabilitation to church services.
Before it was sold by Capital & Coast District Health Board in 2011, the villas and two-storey wards on the grounds were used by a variety of staff and live-in patients, including those with intellectual disabilities, older people with high needs, and those with addiction and mental health issues.
The Office of Treaty Settlements, which bought the land, knocked down three of the buildings after years of neglect had left them uninhabitable.
The standard of other buildings has been questioned, with the boarding houses in particular being criticised as being unsafe.
‘‘The place was full of mice, rats and cockroaches. They were a bit slow on getting things fixed; they didn’t like people complaining,’’ a former tenant, Brian McGlone, said.
‘‘They were putting every man and his dog in there at one stage, and it was a bit rough.’’
Treaty of Waitangi Minister Chris Finlayson was told in a briefing in June that at least two occupied buildings that had people living in them had failed to meet fire safety codes and were too expensive to upgrade.
The preference was to move the 45 tenants into other accommodation and close the buildings.
The new owners would be facing a big cleanup job on other parts of the land, too – many of the remaining buildings have asbestos, and there are 13 unused