When Cathy and Peter Holmes began looking to downsize from their Ōtaki home, they weren’t just searching for a smaller property with less maintenance - they were searching for somewhere that felt right for the next stage of life.
They had looked at villages and townhouses everywhere between Wellington and Palmerston North, but many places felt too crowded or too confined.
“So many places just felt packed in,” Cathy says. “But here, it felt open.”
Peter Lawson lived just down the road when Speldhurst was first being built. He and his late wife Yvonne would often drive past the site as the former Kimberley Centre was being transformed into a village, stopping in occasionally to see how things were progressing.
“We’d stop in for a look every now and then,” Peter says with a smile. “Once we saw what it was becoming, we were never going to leave it alone after that.”
Before moving to Speldhurst, John and Trish Sharp lived rurally on a lifestyle property surrounded by paddocks, gardens, and the steady rhythm of country life.
Over time, the upkeep began to feel like more than they wanted from this stage of life, and the idea of something simpler became increasingly appealing.
A retirement village in rural Horowhenua is defending plans to build a three-storey apartment complex, confident its benefits outweigh the concerns of one neighbour.
Speldhurst Country Estate on Kimberley Rd, which opened in 2016 with a vision to build over 500 homes across its 47 hectares, five kilometres south of Levin, is seeking resource consent to build a 144-apartment complex.
