Last week we rented a bus and took all of our DCM staff on a roundtrip to inspect five very different retirement villages across Sydney. The diversity and learnings was exceptional. But the most interesting thing was the passion of the staff in the detail of their village design and build.
At each location they pointed out the small things that made a big difference for their residents' quality of life and how in many cases they had to fight for those details when ‘the money people’ wanted to reduce the spec.
In our photograph above some of our team are seen with Penrith Panthers’ NRL Premiership winning captain Royce Simmons in the library of the Tulich Family village at Penrith, also named The Royce after the former rugby league player, who is a local footballing great. Bianca Tulich, we were told fought hard for every detail in the village designed by Lara Calder of the architecture firm CalderFlower.
And it shows. The vertical village feels like a much-loved exclusive home with generous architectural highlights and colourful décor, like the striking wallpaper in the background.
The staff also spoke of the price increases they have been achieving as word-of-mouth spreads on how satisfying it is to live in these villages. A big return for the small additional cost for quality detail.
Our thanks to our hosts, the Tulich Family, Uniting, Australian Unity, Levande and Aveo.
