Vale Michael Eggington: 40-year retirement village leader
Michael was always charming, considerate to others, generous with his time, an optimist, ambitious for the retirement village sector and ambitious for the quality of life delivered to residents.
It is with sadness that we report that Michael Eggington passed away on 3 January, aged 70.
He joined the village sector in the late 1980s in Adelaide, and has been a leader ever since, most recently in the UK and Italy.
He commenced as an engineer in his early 30s with Delfin, building the Woodbridge retirement village for the Port Adelaide Central Mission.
Delfin then bought the AV Jennings village business out of receivership in 1995 with the Retirement By Design portfolio of about eight villages. Lendlease purchased Delfin in 2001, creating the anchor village portfolio for its expansion into retirement villages.
In 2007, Michael was recruited to Stockland as GM Retirement. Stockland had developed its Three Ds strategy – Retirement, Residential and Retail. They acquired the Victorian Australian Retirement Communities (ARC) portfolio of villages from the Knowles Family – who then established Arcare.
In 2008, Stockland purchased 15% of Aveo with the intention to merge the groups (but board challenges stalled the strategy and Stockland sold out of Aveo in 2013).
Meanwhile, Michael was called back to Lendlease, becoming the Managing Director of Retirement in 2012, a role he held until 2017. By then, Lendlease was the country’s largest village operator with 77 villages, 16,000 residents and 11% market share.
Throughout that period, Tony Randello was Michael’s Head of Acquisitions.
At our LEADERS SUMMIT in 2015, Michael outlined his vision of who the future customer will be and the product they would seek. He was on the money.
After a break of 12 months from leading Lendlease, at the age of 62, Michael teamed up with Eugene Marchese (founder of Marchese Architects) to establish Guild Living in the United Kingdom, taking the Australian retirement village concept to Europe.
This model has evolved and now operates innovative short, long and permanent retirement accommodation in the UK and Northern Italy. Check out Guild Living HERE. It is worthwhile to see this innovative concept.
In our experience at DCM with Michael, he was always charming, considerate to others, generous with his time, an optimist, ambitious for the retirement village sector and ambitious for the quality of life it delivered to residents.
In March 2009, we conducted an interview with Michael. It is very interesting to now read his vision of the customer and where the sector needed to go. Many of Michael’s predictions are unfolding now. You can read it below.
A loss for the sector.
