Homestead to be turned into retirement village

Press, 4 August 1987, Page 5

Homestead to be turned into retirement village

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LINDA BERCUSSON

A University of Canterbury journalism student

A Wainoni general practitioner and a property developer will soon transform a Merivale homestead into a retirement village and rest home.

The project has a budget of $5 million and will be called Mansfield Gardens. It will offer free, 24hour medical care to all its residents.

Dr Brent Savage and Mr Richard Diver bought the half-hectare property on Mansfield Avenue for what is believed to be $1.3 million and will develop it in three stages. The first is to convert the Elizabethan-styled house into an intermediary care unit with 10 beds, a reception area, offices, sitting rooms, dining room, kitchen and associated service rooms. Seventeen studio apartments will be built in the same style adjoining the house. xr Dr Savage will lA the

medical director and the unit will be staffed by a team of registered nurses headed by his wife, Mrs Joy Couper-Savage. Dr Savage said it was necessary to build the unit before the retirement village of townhouses and apartments because he was obliged as medical director to guarantee a bed to any resident who needed it.

The retirement village, stages two and three, will provide four two-bedroom townhouses and 12 twobedroom apartments. The houses and grounds will be preserved as much as possible with townhouses and apartments built round the many large trees. Both Mr Diver and Dr Savage have gone to great lengths to research the project. At one stage they posed as gardeners to see how one rest home functioned.

Dr Savage said he found some places did not live up to the standard of care promised. "This is a tremendous growth area. A lot of

developers are putting together packages for the elderly and a lot of beds are coming on stream. But that is the point. They are just beds. There is no service,” Dr Savage said.

“If you talk to elderly people there are two things that concern them most, security and fast and easy access to medical care.” The free medical care will make Mansfield Gardens unique in Christchurch. Residents will not be obliged to use the service but it will be available if needed. The aim of the development is to maintain people’s quality of life. Dr Savage does not see why ordinary pleasures or independence should be given up because a person has shifted into a rest home.

Dr Savage said it had been suggested sick people could be shifted out of the intermediary care unit to “get rid of them.”

Jjpwever, it has been artjpiged that only the

Health Department of Princess Margaret Hospital’s geriatric assessment unit could shift a person out of the unit. Dr Savage said he hoped the first stage of the development would be finished by January. However, he will not know if a Health Department licence has been granted until opening day. There is mixed support for Mansfield Gardens. The assistant co-ordina-tor for the Canterbury Hospital Board's geriatric and domiciliary services centre, Mrs Wendy Perry, said the board backed anything which offered such comprehensive care. The Licensed Rest Homes Association’s Canterbury branch president, Mrs Tui Ward, said she had no knowledge of the development. She was worried by the high number of empty beds already in the city, many in homes with good levels of care.

She said she did not know where the developers would find people to fill their beds. &