Metlifecare to consult residents on changes or new builds at 10 facilities

The $5 billion retirement village owner/operator Metlifecare has plans to add higher-level services, including aged-care and hospitalstyle accommodation, to 10 of its existing North Island villages with one village alone planned to get a $100 million injection.

Opportunities have been identified and residents will be consulted in the plans to offer more services in villages so residents can “age in place”, the company says.

Work at eight villages will be converting existing buildings and a further two are demolitions with new-builds. Of the 10 villages, five have some care which will be expanded but at five other villages, higherlevel full-time care will be introduced.

“We have identified the opportunity to convert serviced apartments at eight villages into premium care suites, providing fullycertified aged residential care, including rest home, hospital and palliative care,” said a spokesperson for Metlifecare which declared $5b of assets in its latest annual report.

Some of the villages already have what the company calls “residential care”, meaning aged care and hospital-level services but other villages weren’t built like that originally.

So they will be altered. Work is planned for villages where residents do not have hospital-level care now, as well as expansion of services where higher levels of care are already offered.

In addition to those eight sites, the business is demolishing some buildings on two other sites for aged-care and hospital-level services at Somervale at Mount Maunganui and 7 Saint Vincent, Remuera. At Remuera alone, Metlifecare plans to spend around $100m, the spokesperson said.

So the 10-village expansion, new buildings and redevelopment spend totals well above $100m. But the company isn’t specifying any exact amounts except in Remuera and at Takapuna.

The Herald has reported on an aged-care crisis, with elderly Kiwis languishing in hospital or at home with family unable to properly care for them because rest homes struggling with nursing shortages have stopped admissions.

The spokesperson said Metlifecare now has a programme under way to extend the services at villages so people can remain living where they are as they age.

At each of the 10 villages where changes are planned or under way, options of four varieties of care may be considered by the company: rest home, hospital, secure dementia and respite/palliative care. Not all villages will get all four levels of care.

Serviced apartments in existing buildings will be converted into hospital-level care at Takapuna’s The Poynton and Bayswater in Tauranga.

“Repurposing serviced apartments into care suites like at The Poynton differs from a regeneration project/new build, for example, 7 Saint Vincent, Remuera where we are regenerating an entire building to introduce a care centre,” the spokesperson said.

Work is also well under way at Mount Maunganui in the first “regeneration” programme — corporate speak for demolition and rebuilding.

The Remuera proposal for 7 Saint Vincent on St Vincent Ave involves plans to demolish the 17-unit five-level Raukura block on the well-established site below Remuera Rd.

That is understood to have not been greeted with delight by some residents because it will involve some people moving and extensive construction work at the site where around 100 people live. Some have already left Raukura.

Big works are also planned at Hillsborough Heights where there is no higher level of residential care.

Across at Takapuna’s The Poynton next to North Shore Hospital, a level-one area in the existing main building will be stripped out and converted into hospital-level care.

“We have initiated plans at two existing villages that do not currently have aged care centres to regenerate existing buildings and in doing so, introduce premium care suites, enabling residents to age in place,” she said.

As well as the 10 sites undergoing changes, higher-level care with aged and