Fund sells out of $40 Million Phillip Island retirement village

IT IS out with the old and in with the new at an increasing number of council planning meetings – with another site once earmarked to become a retirement village winding up in the hands of residential developers, which have had reconfigured projects approved.

This time, near the Phillip Island retail township of Cowes, AMP Capital Investors has sold out of a $40 million aged-care based village it earmarked for 26 hectares of former farmland on Ventnor Road.<br /><br />The new owner, a residential developer is now proposing a standard “house-and-land package” based redevelopment, Whyte Sands. Greg Price of selling agency Alex Scott says the reinvented project will yield about 300 lots and be developed over four years.<br />

It’s believed AMP sold the site for about $8 million but this could not be confirmed with selling agency Oliver Hume.

AMP was one of several developers to abandon and sell proposed retirement communities on Phillip Island after the town’s Warley Hospital closed in early 2008, rendering the nearest sickbay 45 minutes away. Sydney-based developer FKP holds a nearby residential village in its Victorian portfolio, and is developing that site, Shearwater, in stages.

In Melbourne, recently, industry super fund CBus Property announced it would build a $100 million residential village on a Brighton site once earmarked for a retirement community that it bought for $18.6 million.

In Hampton, the former Rehabilitation Hospital on Beach Road was also to have become an aged care facility in early planning, but was instead developed into a ritzy apartment complex during the economic downturn.

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Marc Pallisco

A former property analyst and print journalist, Marc is the publisher of realestatesource.com.au.