New $4m St John hub

Tauranga St John Ambulance station is set to get a $4 million state-of-the-art upgrade with visions of the premises becoming a central Bay of Plenty hub.

Construction on the project at the existing 17th Avenue premises is expected to start later this year or early 2015, subject to grant applications.

St John Ambulance district operations manager Jeremy Gooders with the design for the new building.

A concept drawing of the new St John premise at 17th Avenue. Image: Architectural Design Group.

This comes after Tauranga Police CIB Charitable Trust trustee Detective Sergeant Pete Blackwell yesterday announced St John as one of the two major recipients of the 20th and final Tauranga CIB Police Charity Luncheon.

St John district operations manager Jeremy Gooders says St John is well underway in the planning and design stages of the single storey building.

He is not certain when the original building was built, but the operational ambulance station part was built in 1990 – comfortably housing up to six full time staff.

Since then the Tauranga branch has expanded to about 22 staff, 'majorly outgrowing” the premises.

'What we are building in the new complex is a Bay of Plenty St John central hub for all of our activities,” says Jeremy.

'It will not just be a functional operational ambulance station, but will also operate our community services like our health shuttle, coordinating our caring callers and friends of the emergency department.”

To help get the project across the line businesses in the 247 Cameron Road ANZ Business Centre have formed a working party called the St John Building Project Trust.

St John Building Project Trust chairman Richard Cashmore says a representative from each company in the ANZ Business Centre, along with Jeremy, will take part in the project for the building of St John's new premises.

'The skills and enthusiasm of the group will culminate in a wonderful asset for our city,” says Richard.

Funding for the $4m will come from a mixture of funding grants and applications as well as public support in the coming months.

Jeremy says 80 per cent of the organisation's funds for running the service come from the government and ACC, but this doesn't cover the cost of the building.

'We are absolutely delighted with the CIB Charity Luncheon has chosen us as one of the major beneficiaries.”

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1 comment

Hopefull The NZTA and Council will assist

Posted on 31-07-2014 17:30 | By Murray.Guy

Hopefully the NZTA and City Council will assist with the provision of direct access for emergency vehicles only, to Route K. Much of the emergency, time critical responses, are outside of the city boundaries and to struggle with the traffic lights and Cameron Rd beggars belief when such a critical time saving access could be achieved very cost effectively (not if TCC do it). A simply automatic barrier can be installed to restrict public abuse. Perhaps TCC are too busy designing traffic lights at the Greerton roundabout, Chadwick/Cameron Rd, where they aren't needed and not wanted!


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