Three-storey retirement village approved for Joslin
Nearly two years after a seven-storey retirement village in Joslin was rejected following a community outcry, a new three-storey plan has been approved for the site.
- Life Care scraps plans for high-rise retirement village
- Fury as Life Care project bypasses council planning process
- Life Care proposes $250 million upgrades to sites in Glen Osmond, Norwood and Joslin
A $47.6 million aged-care complex has been approved for Joslin, putting an end to a “hard-fought and emotional” three-year community battle.
The State Government’s assessment panel on Friday approved Life Care’s plan to build a three-storey complex at 247-261 Payneham Rd.
It will house 28 one-bedroom and 13 two-bedroom units and have a 75-space basement carpark.
Life Care had wanted to build a seven-storey complex on the site, but this plan — and a proposal to build two other towering retirement homes in Norwood and Glen Osmond — was abandoned in late 2017 following a relentless community campaign.
Residents protested the height and scale of the three proposals.
Within days of Life Care withdrawing the plans, then-planning minister John Rau declared rules that allowed aged-care projects valued at more than $20 million to bypass the traditional assessment pathway would be scrapped immediately.
Peter Holmes, who helped lead the charge against Life Care’s seven-storey plan for Joslin, said last week’s approval brought an end to a “hard-fought and emotional” three-year battle by local residents.
“It is a possible lesson to all developers that appropriate development is likely to be supported and even enhanced, but a lack of consideration of local character, scale and impact on privacy will incur the wrath of residents and delay,” Mr Holmes said.
Life Care also received retrospective planning approval for an already-built aged-care centre, which has 96 one-bedroom units, next door to the site.
It had requested the panel consider the site as a whole and give the retrospective approval to “tidy up the applications”.
A Life Care spokesman said the first building was rubber-stamped and constructed under an earlier approval.