Construction of the Gosling Creek aged-care home is well under way with the owners, Allity, saying the development is inspired by the traditional Australian homestead.

Calare and Gosling Creek general manager Sue-Anne Redmond said the aged-care home would feature all single rooms with ensuites, and wall-mounted televisions in every room. She said the facility would have four separate living areas with their own lounge and dining facilities.

Residents will each have their own balcony with the facility designed to be all ground-floor living with access to large landscaped gardens.

A coffee shop and hairdressing salon will feature in the large foyer area of Gosling Creek, with access to the nursing home at the rear of the building off Forest Road.

Traffic lights will be installed near the southern entrance to the nursing home with the existing former coffee shop adjacent to the old post office building to be demolished within the next couple of weeks.

“The nursing home has the capacity to take 60 residents including some residents with dementia to be housed in a secure separate area which opens out on to a large landscaped garden.” Ms Redmond said.

Ms Redmond said Allity intended to renovate the Calare site, which has up to four residents in some rooms who share communal bathrooms.

“Our architects are in the process of redesigning Calare,” she said.

Ms Redmond encourages people inquiring about places in the new facility to contact Calare Nursing Home.

“We have already established a waiting list,” she said.

Ms Redmond said there was a strong emphasis on privacy in the new facility combined with a small neighbourhood concept of four individual residential buildings all joined to access larger communal areas.

“We will also have a separate function area which can be reserved by families for special celebrations such as birthdays,” she said.

Ms Redmond said the number of residents in the Calare facility would be reduced from 60 to 43 with the redevelopment.

She said a great deal of thought would  be put into which residents would be relocated to Gosling Creek, depending on their individual circumstances, with management conscious some people may not want to move to a new place.

“After all, we want people to feel whether they are at Calare or Gosling Creek they are at home - it is their home,” she said.

janice.harris@fairfaxmedia.com.au