Land at Wakari Hospital could be sold for about half a million dollars to allow the construction of independent residential accommodation for elderly and young disabled people.
The Otago District Health Board yesterday agreed to begin the process to sell the land for its registered valuation of $585,000 to rest-home and hospital Leslie Groves, which wants to expand its adjacent facilities.
Chief executive Brian Rousseau said the land was the ideal site for any future developments as it was flat.
Most of the remaining land at the Wakari site was steep and would need significantly more capital to be developed.
However, no major developments were planned for the Wakari site, he said.
"If we had tonnes of money, we would clear the Wakari site and do everything centrally."
Board member Richard Thomson said Dunedin Hospital was not "landlocked" but "financially locked".
There was still undeveloped land at the Dunedin site and it had a building - the Fraser building - which "a small thermonuclear device would help with".
The Fraser building was an inefficient and inconvenient use of land, he said.
If Leslie Groves bought the land, it planned to move its hospital ward to its Roslyn facility so it could build new rest-home accommodation at Wakari, an agenda report said.
