Looking for some land and a resource consent to build a hospital? A large piece of prime land in Wānaka is officially up for sale two years after it was announced it would be a major new healthcare hub.
Mike Saegers, the founder and chairman of property developer Roa Group, told 1News in 2024 of his vision to bring better health services to his community.
At the time he spoke about multiple family emergencies which exposed gaps in healthcare.
"My son was struggling to breathe... We called the emergency line... there was no ambulance in town, nowhere to go at six or seven o'clock at night, and that feeling of helplessness as a parent — I wouldn't wish it on anyone."
Roa Group wanted to construct a $300 million multi-storey health precinct at Three Parks business park in the Southern Lakes town.
It would have more than 70 beds, four operating theatres and an option for a 24-hour public-access emergency department.
But while Roa Group expressed interest in building the project, it wanted the public health system to run parts of the service – and the ED department in particular.
1News can reveal Health New Zealand met with the developer for "occasional meetings" over the past two years, during which the government department made "no commitment to purchase, lease, or operate the precinct, and engagement to date should not be taken as a commitment to any future infrastructure model".
"The Wānaka Health Precinct is a privately-led development," Health NZ planning, funding, and outcomes director Rachel Haggerty said.
"Health New Zealand does not currently support the Wānaka Health Precinct being designated as a future publicly-owned regional hospital."
A property developer has released ambitious plans for a new medical facility in the South Island town. (Source: Supplied)
She added: "Our focus is on the health services required to meet the Central Lakes population needs and the most appropriate and sustainable way of delivering them."
In a statement, Saegers said Te Whatu Ora's clinical planning work and recent regional data "confirm what our community experiences daily".
"The Central Lakes catchment faces an inequitable travel burden, with many residents forced to drive many hours to Dunedin, Invercargill and Christchurch for diagnostics, specialist appointments, procedures and other health services," he said.
"Having proven the concept, secured the land, completed the significant consenting heavy lifting and achieved commercial validation, the Wānaka Health Precinct has reached natural inflection point."
The project is now up for sale, with 1.3ha of land, intellectual property to the development and resource consent as part of the more than $300m package.
A shared vision
Savills managing director Ryan Geddes had been tasked with the search for more capital investors.
"[Saeger’s] done a great job to get it to where it is but has realised the need now that it needs to be delivered a lot quicker than potentially he probably could," Geddes said.
Geddes said it provided an opportunity for a potential operator, pointing to Forte Health in Christchurch. The privately-owned hospital had bought Capital Inn for development and the facility was now "world-class".
Local councillor and deputy mayor Quentin Smith praised the developer for giving it a go in the first place.
"It was great to see someone with the vision to come up with an integrated healthcare hub for Wānaka… I hope that any purchaser of this property shares that vision and that we continue to have people investing," Smith said.
"There's no question that we've got a deficit of healthcare services and we need to a multitude of solutions to deliver that."
There was confidence overseas capital could be found, potentially from Australia.
"You might end up with a local developer with international capital," Geddes said.
"To deliver it quick, you need a lot of capital because it is a $300 million project and not many people have that type of capital to do it. So, if we pair it with a developer and capital coming in, I think there's just huge opportunity for someone to do it."
Saegers said the focus was now to "ensure the project is best positioned to deliver the healthcare services this community requires".
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