New health centre site

A $2 million health centre is to be built in Omokoroa later this year - and this time project organisers have a suitable site.
The project this week goes before Western Bay of Plenty District Council to gain resource consent and, if approved, a 4700m2 block on Omokoroa Rd will be purchased and construction will begin.
Omokoroa Medical Centre's Dr Murray Smith said the site had been chosen after project organisers worked with the council, which re-zoned the land from industrial to commercial to facilitate the development.
The group had previously struck trouble finding a site with main road access, within walking distance for residents and zoned commercial.
A previous application to build on the corner of Tralee St and Omokoroa Rd was withdrawn because the site was zoned residential and a neighbouring commercial-zoned landowner had objected.
Omokoroa pharmacist Bruce Clarke said everyone had to pass the site on the main road and it was close to Country Estate retirement village.
"We've an estimated 900 people a week going to both the medical centre and the pharmacy. In the new facility both services will have three times the amount of space," Dr Smith said.
Mr Clarke said a larger dispensary will give him a chance to employ a second pharmacist (not permitted in his current setup under pharmacy regulations). "At the moment I'm working late hours to try and ease this problem," he said.
The new centre would have space for four medical staff, a larger pharmacy of four staff, an osteopath, counsellor, physiotherapist, a dentist and a café. It includes off-street parking, rooms for performing minor surgery, and perhaps an ambulance bay.
It will be at 170 Omokoroa Rd (opposite Omokoroa hot pools), will be built over five months and be privately funded in partnership between doctors of Bethlehem Medical Centre (which own Omokoroa Medical Centre) and Omokoroa Pharmacy. It is hoped to open next April or May.
Omokoroa Medical Centre now operates from a McDonnell St premises, with Mr Clarke's pharmacy in the same block of shops. Dr Smith has been in Omokoroa for 15 years and Mr Clarke for 20.
Dr Jeff Brownless of Bethlehem Medical Centre said the Omokoroa practice began in 1987, when three doctors serviced the peninsula individually.
"Two of us, myself and Dr Geoff Olsen, worked in Omokoroa three afternoons a week, while Dr John Wardill also served the community. He was a local resident, who worked daily and on weekends until he died, while still working, in his 70s in the 1990s."
Initially, the medical centre was at Margaret Place, then moved to Hamurana Rd for five years "working out of a 20m2 box where nurses had an underneath cubicle".
The present centre was developed 12 to 15 years ago.