Bupa Crofton Downs retirement village

Bupa Crofton Downs includes 82 apartments and a 49-bed care home wing, plus a community centre with various lounges and cafés, a cinema, hair salon, indoor swimming pool, gym, commercial kitchen, library, offices, reception, four lifts and 26 flights of stairs. The basement is an underground car park with 100 parks and below that, the lower basement has back of house facilities, including a plant room, staff room and laundry.

The facility is perched on a hill with steep banks along three sides and a busy road on the fourth. The design maximised the land available and the views, but very little laydown space meant our site team needed to stay right on top of logistics.

This was a collaborative project from start to finish, with our team standing out for their positive approach through all the challenges that projects of this size hold – plus the arrival of Covid. A good example of this was our team working through issues with the cladding junctions with the suppliers, designers, subcontractors, and Council, producing mock-ups to help explain the scenarios. Once underway, the envelope gained momentum to the point where the scaffolders were struggling to keep up!

The Crofton Downs community were apprehensive about the large development. We endeavoured to be good neighbours, partnering with the local primary school for several events and collecting rubbish from around the area.

We were pleased to receive feedback from the subcontractors, consultants and neighbours about how well the site was run from start to finish. Crofton Downs is now Bupa’s flagship New Zealand retirement village.