Fight is on to stop high-rise retirement villages in the east

RESIDENTS across Adelaide’s east are banding together to fight multi-million dollar plans for high-rise retirement villages in their neighbourhoods.

Artist impression of Life Care's vision for a retirement home at 157 Beulah Rd, Norwood. Source: supplied.

RESIDENTS across Adelaide’s east are banding together to fight multi-million dollar plans for high-rise retirement villages in their neighbourhoods.

Joslin, Norwood and Glen Osmond residents have formed a new community action group amid rising tension over aged-care provider Life Care’s proposed $250 million expansion of its homes in the three suburbs.

The group – Play Fair Life Care – has spent the past month letterboxing homes, convening public meetings and lobbying local councils and state MPs to pressure Life Care to scale back plans for its sites on Payneham, Beulah and Portrush roads.

Group spokesman and Joslin resident Peter Holmes said the “call to arms” was designed to co-ordinate the efforts of smaller groups – Caring About Joslin and Oppose Glenrose Hi-Rise – which had established since Life Care’s plans were unveiled in July.

Mr Holmes said residents were primarily concerned with the possible height and scale of the developments, including a nine-storey home earmarked for the Glen Osmond site, next to Seymour College, and a seven-storey complex planned for Roselin Court, in Joslin.

Artists impressions of Life Care, Joslin.

He said there was also widespread anger over a new provision which meant Life Care’s plans – and all other aged-care developments valued at more than $20 million – would be assessed directly by Planning Minister John Rau.

“The rules are currently stacked in the favour of the developer – that is clear to see,” Mr Holmes told the Eastern Courier Messenger.

“The process should not be designed to give developers the upper-hand over residents, but the major-project clause is allowing that to happen.”

A spokeswoman for the group, Glen Osmond resident Manya Angley, said she and her neighbours where “completely taken aback” when notified of Life Care’s plan via a flyer circulated by the Caring About Joslin group last month.

Mrs Angley said residents were incensed with the fast-tracked assessment process.

“This process is so beyond usual democratic process that people cannot conceptualise that this totalitarian approach is happening in little old Adelaide,” Mrs Angley said.

Life Care has in the past fortnight held public meetings in Norwood and Joslin and plans to meet with Glen Osmond residents to hear their concerns.

The organisation’s chief executive, Allen Candy, said designs for the three sites were “preliminary development concepts” that would be “refined” in the next two months before they were submitted to the government.

A report detailing those plans would then be released for public consultation before Mr Rau made a final assessment.

A spokeswoman for Mr Rau said the new assessment process was appropriate to meet increasing demand in SA for retirement and aged-care living options.

“SA has a faster ageing population than other mainland states and by 2031 it is estimated that there will be more than 440,000 people aged over 65, making up more than 1 in 5 of South Australia’s total population,” the spokeswoman said.

She said the process was the most “rigorous form of all planning assessments in the State”, requiring the developer to prepare “much more” detail than an ordinary development application.