Ingenia is bravely taking on Byron Bay with a proposed lifestyle community behind the local hospital, four years after a retirement village pitch for the site was quashed.
The listed land lease operator said it was sensitive to the Ewingsdale setting and would eschew contentious elements of the previous proposal, including commercial, retail or medical uses of the site and multi-level dwellings.
In 2016, the development proposed by the then-owners of the two parcels (15.8 ha in total) was fiercely opposed by residents and Byron Shire Council.
Ingenia has an option over the site and says there will be significantly less density than the previous proposal.
The company is yet to finalise the size of the development as it will be dependent on feedback from community consultation which began this month.
Project leader Paul Brumpton told Echo Netdaily the proposal for the over 55s community respects “the heritage and conservation values of the site” and all residences would be single-level and screened from surrounding roads.
He said the company would restore a historically significant building on the site and retain all environmentally significant trees.
The company has a pipeline of 4,260 potential home sites with a recent $131.1 million equity raising and a new $100 million, 7-year debt facility set to fund their continued expansion.
