Retirement village development plan for A&L Florist’s Bossley Park farm
An iconic south west Sydney floristry business will make way for a $75 million retirement village and aged care facility.
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A 100-home retirement village and an aged care facility could replace a 46-year-old floristry business in Bossley Park.
The Olivieri family have operated A&L Florist from their 32,400 sqm farm since 1973, but the rising value of land has encouraged them to file applications for its development.
They are proposing to build about a hundred independent living homes, a 144-bed aged care facility and an underground carpark with 150 spaces at their property on The Horsley Drive.
“The value of the land was too much to grow flowers on, so instead of just selling it for housing, we thought ‘what could we do with it?’,” Vince Olivieri said, the general manager of A&L Florist, and the business development manager of what will become known as Alora Gardens Estates.
“We were thinking, ‘we’ll build a retirement village to look after ourselves and our family’. We always looked after our own.”
The development makes fiscal sense due to the demand and shortage of elderly living facilities in Bossley Park, Mr Olivieri said.
“There is retirement living here, but it’s very limited and there’s at least a four-year waitlist in this area,” he said. “We need a lot more retirement living.”
The aged care facility will be run by a third-party operator. About 50 of the beds will be allocated to people who cannot afford them in a subsidy arrangement organised by the government, he said.
The retirement village will be a secured gated community with one, two and three bedroom apartments and villas. The residences will be two-storeys tall at most, keeping with the zoning’s height limit of eight metres.
There will also be a community centre, cafe, hairdresser, gift store, theatre and a village bus service for shopping and day excursions, Mr Olivieri said.
The redevelopment of the land will not spell the end for A&L Florist, the business the family has operated since 1973. The family will expand their operations at their second farm, an 85,000 sqm Redmayne Rd property in Horsley Park, as development of Alora Garden Estates takes place.
The family is currently securing funding for the development and anticipate it will cost $75 million — excluding the value of the land.
The Alora Garden Estate proposal is currently before the Sydney Western City Planning Panel. It could be finalised within six to nine months, Mr Olivieri said, making way for construction by November 2020.