Building defects at Blue Haven to be fixed before sale

Kiama Municipal Council is in negotiations with a preferred tender for the purchase of the Blue Haven site, a process which is expected to wrap up in around a month.

In preparation for that, the council is working to get the builder of Bonaira to fix defects before handing it over to a buyer.

"We are in heavy negotiations with the original builder to make sure that the building defects that have been there since the beginning are going to be fixed to a good standard," Kiama Mayor Neil Reilly said.

"There are quite a number of building defects that have to be still fixed. It's been known for a while and we put it into the tender documents. It made a potential buyer aware that there were building defects."

Cr Reilly said the defects were minor in nature, the worst of them related to bathroom drains.

"They had these beautifully designed Danish bathrooms," he said. "They had these grooved drains in them and they put them together in Campbelltown and drove them down here. They were a bit knocked around by the time they got here."

The mayor also poured cold water on rumours that any buyer could itself off-load the site in a few years, raising the spectre of apartments being built on the site.

The claim stems from a caveat on the land title that said a nursing home must operate on the site until 2027 - after which time an alleged sell-off would happen.

However, Cr Reilly said the council's sale process was looking to extend the requirement there be a nursing home there well past 2027.

"We've undertaken with the community to ensure that it stays as a nursing home facility," he said.

"That was written into the tender documents; if you're going to buy this, you're buying a nursing facility and that's what we expect to see in years to come.

"We're going to ensure that it's a nursing home and it's written into the contract. It has to be a nursing home in perpetuity."