On 26 September, stand-alone Not For Profit Wongaburra Society turned the first sod on the redevelopment of its 50-year-old 61-bed aged care home, which will be converted into a new and refurbished 68-bed home.
Wongaburra Aged Care, in Beaudesert, 75km south of Brisbane, had 125 beds. A second building, containing 64 beds, was built in 2007, but will not be redeveloped.
CEO Wongaburra Society
Originally, Wongaburra hoped to redevelop the 61-bed home into a 72-bed facility, but after costs doubled over the four years of planning, the project has been scaled back, as featured in our recent article in SATURDAY.
Today, the cost of the project will be $39.4 million - or $579,000 per bed according to our back-of-envelope calculations. CEO Atul Kumar Singh told The SOURCE the provider spent more than $2 million just to get the project to approval stage.
The redevelopment will be conducted in three stages, and will include the construction of 53 new rooms, the refurbishment of 15 rooms, as well as the building of a new kitchen, laundry, storage, nurse station, doctor station, and a new training facility, in a bid to attract and retain staff.
RADs for the new rooms are expected to be $600,000 on average. The project is expected to be complete in December 2026, more than six years after the project was first conceived.