Age mix crucial to creating diverse communities

FUTURE SUNSHINE COAST: Diversity in demographics is key when creating future communities.

Bruce Harper from Avid. Picture: Warren Lynam

DIVERSITY in demographics will be key to creating strong communities of the future.

That's the view of Avid Property Group's Queensland general manager Bruce Harper.

His company is delivering its Harmony estate at Palmview, a master-planned development set to house more than 12,000 residents.

A crucial part of the creation of that community is the inclusion of the elderly, with Aveo's $60 million development within Harmony, close to the future town centre.

"As a developer I consider it vital that communities we build are diverse,” he said.

"It is the social glue that makes communities. There are too many examples in the past of communities designed and planned around a single demographic, often young families.”

He said as communities aged, often the parks, services and infrastructure weren't designed for children as they grew older, and social problems developed.

He said their Grand Linear Park in the Palmview development was designed to cater to children of all ages, adults and the elderly.

NEW COMMUNITY: Avid Property Group's Bruce Harper says diversity in age groups is vital to the social fabric of future communities.

They were also conducting long-table dinners for new residents, in a bid to help them get to know each other and help different age groups, ethnicities and backgrounds mesh together.

Mr Harper said aged care and retirement living would play an increasingly large role in communities on the Coast over the next 30 years.

"The sector has been integrated in many of the communities already developed,” he said.

"And who could blame people wanting to retire here given the beaches, hinterland and climate that the region offers.

"These numbers will increase given both the current skew of older cohorts and those that will continue to be attracted to the lifestyle and natural advantages that the Sunshine Coast offers.”

As baby boomers moved into retirement, Mr Harper expected them to demand a higher standard of independent and semi-independent living.

"A greater percentage of boomers will put off going into what are communities designed for them and will seek to 'age in place' with services coming to them, creating a growth industry of community support services,” he said.

"Resort-style retirement living is here to stay but the cost of land will drive the development industry to maximise land cost by building both multi-storey aged care facilities and retirement apartment living products.”

Over the next three decades his firm would be busy building out their Harmony estate at Palmview, which would include retirement and aged care facilities.

He said they were also looking at other opportunities to acquire development sites in the region, to expand into construction of medium-density housing and apartments.

"We think the Sunshine Coast will continue to outpace the growth of other regions of Queensland,” he said.

Mr Harper said Avid had looked at retirement living as part of its future plans, but to-date had been happy working with current operators to help them into sites, including Aveo at Palmview.

He said the biggest challenge facing retirement living was the cost of land for new villages, which made it hard to make them stack up commercially, as it was "more profitable for developers to divide and sell the land”.

"However in large-scale projects such as Harmony we think it is more sustainable to create a broad-based and diverse community that will be socially sustainable,” Mr Harper said.

"To do this we have and will continue to supply land for retirement and aged care facilities.

"We genuinely believe that we are creating communities not suburban land divisions.”