A plan to make the former Countdown Kensington site into a health precinct has been "stolen" by Northland Regional Council, says the charitable trust who helped develop the idea.
Disability resource centre NorthAble said they never heard back after submitting a comprehensive 11-page expression of interest to NRC in December 2014, and the trust was surprised to hear via word-of-mouth the council was now pursuing a similar plan.
The idea for a hospital at the site was first floated by NRC in 2013, but NorthAble trust chairman Vince Cocurullo said his group was now being excluded from an idea for which they had done all the legwork. This included a survey of shoppers in the Kensington area, liaising with the Kensington Health Consortium and setting up a joint venture agreement with a developer keen to take over NorthAble's current John St premises.
"Now, all of a sudden [NRC] are approaching the consortium. We've done all the work and put it all together but Malcolm [Nicolson] from NRC has decided to do it all their own way. I'm guessing it's because they decided it was better money," Mr Cocurullo said.
Mr Cocurullo criticised the lack of communication from NRC.