About Us

The Coromandel Senior Settlement Trust was established in 1986 after wide public consultation by a group of Coromandel citizens (some of whom lent substantial sums to get it started) for the purpose of creating an accommodation complex for senior citizens of the district – the result was Elizabeth Park Village. (Names and details in the “In Search of the Rainbow” extract.) As a consequence of the risks exposed by the 1987 share market crash and its subsequent upheavals, the basis of the village changed from the customary “retirement village” to an accommodation complex governed by the Unit Titles Act. This arrangement gives full title (subject to a 55+ years of age occupancy covenant) to residents (rather than a “license to occupy”) and control to them as Body Corporate members of levies charged and how the village is run. (When the last of the sections is built on and title transferred, the Trust will, in fact, no longer have any part in the village.)

Aerial view of the Elizabeth Park Village

Elizabeth Park Village seen from a nearby hill

In 1989 the Trust purchased "The Bizarre" opportunity shop (which had been started over 20 years before by the local Anglican Church) as a means of protecting the future of a valued Coromandel institution and to raise funds for the Trust. Both purposes have been well and truly served in the years since.

Several years ago the need to raise funds for the Trust as an accommodation provider for senior citizens was well and truly past. It would have continued had a proposal to provide rental accommodation been viable, but the high cost of local authority levies and development requirements put paid to this. Others such as the Coromandel Independent Living Trust who had access to central government funding were much better able to carry this forward.

With the impending completion of Elizabeth Park amply fulfilling the purposes for which the Trust was set up, an obvious course of action was to wind up its operations and – as required by law – pass its considerable assets to some other qualified charitable organisation. The continued success of "The Bizarre" suggested an alternative, however. Once the core activity of the Trust ceased to need the support of its income a policy has developed of making grants from that income to other community causes. To date (May 2008) some $44,000 has been distributed in this way to various causes ranging from assisting Coromandel Scouts to get to a Jamboree to helping pay for the St John Ambulance’s new defibrillator. The Trust Board saw that, if it added to “The Bizarre” income the income from its not insubstantial capital resources following the sale of the last sections in Elizabeth Park, there was the basis for a small-scale local grant-giving Trust.

So – on the assumption that the Coromandel community is prepared to support it - the Trust has been prepared to convert itself into a source of community support. For the time being, in accordance with the intentions of its founders, it will give a degree of priority to the needs and interests of senior citizens – but not to the exclusion of other causes and projects. (The Trust Deed has been appropriately amended.)