Reweti Kohere, NBR:
Qestral Corporation’s Coastal View Lifestyle Village will open its doors early next year, the aged care village developer’s first foray into Nelson at a cost of $190 million.
Aerial render of Coastal View retirement village
Targeting the market’s premium end, residents of the 190-house venture will enjoy mountain and sea views and proximity to Nelson’s hospital and city centre.
Eleven houses and a 60-bed rest home and hospital are due to open in February or March 2021, while 35 houses will open each year for the next five to six years.
Some 30 apartments, a 20-bed specialised dementia unit, and a yacht club housing a wellness centre, gym, indoor swimming pool and spa, library, bakery, café, restaurant, and a hairdresser will also make up the village.
Based on the level of interest, Coastal View will be “extremely popular,” chair John Ryder said.
Qestral purchased the site six years ago with the goal of flattening what was effectively a valley on Nelson’s Tahunanui Hills.
Most retirement village operators have sought the flat Waimea Plains near Richmond. But Qestral wanted to be close to the city centre, with views over Tasman Bay. It may have taken since 2014, but some 600,000 cubic metres of soil was moved, Ryder said.
“Now, to give you some perspective of that, an average load for a dump truck is about eight cubic metres. So, you can work that out – it’s a fair few truckloads to establish the site.”
It’s the 16th retirement village the experienced Ryder has planned and developed in his almost 40 years in the sector. The NBR Rich Lister co-founded NZX giant Ryman Healthcare in 1984, managing it for 18 years before leaving in 2002.
The chair said accountants had gotten a hold of the industry and, to increase the bottom line, have pushed for higher buildings and getting as many units out of a smaller site.
Qestral, on the other hand, has sought to “de-intensify” villages on the basis retirees wanted “non-institutional” living – wide roads, buildings no higher than two storeys, and units with about 500sq m of space.
“People like to avoid the stigma of a gated community so we seek to create a village that is as much like an ordinary residential subdivision as possible.”
Loneliness
Covid-19’s presence throughout much of 2020 has resulted in the industry effectively shutting down during lockdowns, Ryder said, for good, logical reasons – retirement village operators have care facilities, rest homes and hospitals, and large groups of elderly, a population most vulnerable to the virus.
Flare-ups in community transmission has made selling units difficult, with open days prohibited and restrictions on the group size of prospective customers. But once the country reopened, the industry caught up, Ryder said.
“It’s been a stop-start sort of exercise.”
The industry could claim some positives from the pandemic. Increasing loneliness was evident among elderly Kiwis caring for themselves during lockdowns, with relatives and friends forced to minimise contact and drop off supplies at front doors. They also had very few, if any, chances to mix and mingle with others.
Ryder said: “To a significant extent, they have looked for the company of a retirement village and they have looked for the back-up care that exists with nurses and caregivers being present on the site.”
Status quo
Phone calls or video chats have filled the void of in-person contact, with technology’s use ramping up during the first Covid-19 lockdown.
One of Qestral’s innovations is a remote telehealth monitor. In all houses, Bluetooth-connected computer tablets measure and record a resident’s health vitals, such as temperature, blood pressure, pulse, weight, and blood oxygen levels. GPs or village nurses can then download that information.
The technology allows ‘one touch’ communication with management and others, allowing residents to always know what’s going on with activities and social events. Residents can follow staff exercise videos through the system, watch thought-provoking talks, play games, and receive constant updates, news and weather throughout the day.
Qestral has developed the technology over three years with New Zealand healthcare electronic company Spritely.
Ryder said technology’s use in the industry would become the status quo, although adoption would lag.
It’s where the industry must go, though, he said, especially in serving those customers with a level of healthcare needs that didn’t require significant attention.
“It’s what we call ‘intermediate care’ and it’s quite important it doesn’t cost the elderly people too much with respect to that because they can be in this sort of intermediate care situation for many years, a decade or so.
“What we’re trying to do is say ‘look, we can provide you this through electronics at extremely low cost and not have individual care because as this stage you don’t need it. You don’t need the human intervention’. So, we see that intermediate stage as quite important for the industry.”
Pipeline
Besides Coastal View, Qestral owns and operates Christchurch’s Alpine View and Burlington villages. Development of a third site – the 12ha, $160m Banbury Park village in Halswell, will start later this year.
Two more villages, Hamilton’s Broadwater and Whangarei’s Ashbury Heights, will begin development in 2021. The 19ha Hamilton site, opposite the city’s gardens, will have 650m of Waikato River waterfront land.
“There is a pipeline of about 950-odd houses and care facilities and what we call ‘lodges’ or other operators call ‘community centres’. So, it’s quite an extensive pipeline,” Ryder said.
Eight years ago, Ryder formed Christchurch-based Qestral with brothers Simon and Jeremy O’Dowd and private equity firm Direct Capital.
Ryder and family interests own a fifth of the company. Direct Capital owns 27.46%, businessman Simon Plowman’s Siplow Nominees has 14.11% of shares, Jeremy and Lyndene O’Dowd hold 9.68%, and Simon and Helen O’Dowd have a 9.08% stake.