Kirkbrae:
Master plan and site development, Mt Dandenong Road, Kilsyth, Victoria
Kirkbrae Project Partners
Without any development expertise in-house, Presbyterian Homes sought a development director to guide them through the entire process from strategy to delivery of the built form. Design and planning approval for the new first stage has now been approved.
Development Director Services
The client’s vision for Kirkbrae was to transform the very tired 50-year-old aged care facility into a new and vibrant hybrid development, which combined an aged care facility with the independent living of a retirement village.
We provided project and development management services. Specific services Urban Neighbourhoods provided included:
master planning and modelling
provision of advice to the board and senior management on strategy, vision, process, and financial feasibility
management of vacant land and staging during the project
completion of due diligence to satisfy legal and financial requirements, including risk assessment
creation and management of project teams to execute and deliver the project.
Team and system development
Urban Neighbourhoods also managed project workshops functions and managed navigating for the technical, architectural and planning teams. For future stages we developed and created new systems processes for handover to the internal development team, thus ensuring their knowledge capture and systems design were retained in-house.
Site Limitations
Presbyterian Homes required the redevelopment of the site and ongoing assistance to keep the facility operational and cause as little disruption as possible to the lives of residents while the redevelopment happened around existing dwellings.
They also wanted to expand the facility’s capacity as this had been limited by the previous design not taking advantage of the slope of the site.
Complex Issues
Urban Neighbourhoods developed a strategic overview and project analysis that managed the needs of both the residents and Kirkbrae, the owner.
For Kirkbrae this meant careful management of complex issues such as the design of the housing and accommodation product, as well as people, timing and operational considerations.
A key driver of the project was to maintain a lifestyle separation that buffered the residents from the most invasive of the works, while the works themselves were still able to be undertaken without interruption.
‘Retaining knowledge in-house is central
to our approach.’
Development management advice on large-scale and/or concurrent developments is only an email away
