Little plans growing
Former Essendon AFL chairman stepping up search for Gold Coast development opportunities
PAUL Little, who’s made a truckload of money out of the transport industry, appears to be getting really revved up over the Gold Coast property market.
The former Toll Holdings boss very discreetly has moved into a higher gear with a Broadbeach tower project he snared last year.
He’s also believed to be actively chasing development land.
The original plan for his Broadbeach project – for a 39storey tower with 131 apartments on a 1032sq m Philip Ave site – has been tossed out the window.
So has a revised, and approved, effort – a building of 42 levels and 177 units.
Now Paul, who’s at the wheel of the Little Group and a property arm that develops in both Victoria and New Zealand, has put his foot on an adjoining Philip Ave holding.
That means his development site no longer is quite so ‘little’ – it’s more than doubled in size.
His architects, Rothelowman, have gone back to the drawing boards and come up with a 35-level tower with 263 apartments.
It appears that if it gets the nod from the city council, the apartments – aimed at both owner-occupiers and investors – could be on the market by January.
Paul, who as chairman steered the Essendon AFL club through a drug supplements scandal, apparently is rather bullish about the Gold Coast and the Broadbeach project isn’t the only goal he wants to kick.
Financially, he’s rather well set up for new ventures – he came in as a $927 million man in the 2017 Financial Review rich list.
He kicked a big win with Toll Holdings when Japan Post turned up in 2015 with a $6.5 billion takeover bid.
Paul shares the money around as a philanthropist and uses it to indulge in passions such as restoring a DC-3 aircraft that arrived in Australia in 1938 and an old MG, which when renewed he flogged around a race circuit.
His Philip Ave venture isn’t being undertaken solo – the company being used for the project, Philip Avenue, has advisory firm Korda-Mentha as a minority shareholder.
Paul used the KM property office at Broadbeach to find a project.
The initial part of the Philip Ave site was secured by paying nearly $1 million for options held on the two titles by Bond Uni student Ayrton Mansi and then exercising those options at a cost of $4.24 million.
The KM team is expected to handle marketing of the Little tower, which will climb skyward north of a Hedges Ave property on which the Sunland Group is proposing a high-rise in which the apartments will average more than $2 million.
The big Little building is north of a tower-site developer Daniel Veitch appears to be undertaking.
THE FORMER TOLL HOLDINGS BOSS VERY DISCREETLY HAS MOVED INTO A HIGHER GEAR.