ASF lifts luxury to a whole new level
THE ASF group, left reeling after its integrated resort plans were rebuffed, is back – small-time but lavish.
ASF is heading a team behind the most elite boutique apartment tower planned in Surfers Paradise in more than a decade.
Prices in The Au Surfers Paradise, which will overlook the ocean, start at $3.7 million and top $10 million.
ASF describes itself as management consultants to the owner of the 52A The Esplanade site, Paradise Development Holding.
Paradise Development is incorporated in the Virgin Islands and its directors include David Fang, a key ASF figure in failed bids to build a $3 billion integrated resort, firstly on Wavebreak Island and then on the Southport Spit.
The Au Surfers Paradise is a more modest project – it is valued at around $70 million.
A year ago ASF gained development approval for The Au Southport, Scarborough St towers of 66 and 15 levels, but has not given a starting date.
The Au Surfers Paradise will sit between the Chateau and Grosvenor buildings on a 506 square metre site bought for $1.95 million in 2013.
The 17-level building is described as offering apartment owners the chance to “revel in a lavish lifestyle”.
Those owners will have a 24-hour concierge service. Nicolette van Wijngaarden, managing-director of Unique Estates Australia, yesterday said that for such a boutique building to offer that service and to include a pool, gymnasium, sauna and residents’ lounge made it “very special”.
She said one of The Au’s 12 full-floor apartments, which would span at least 250sq m, already had sold.
A Sydney buyer had earmarked one of the two 500 sqm tri-level penthouses.
Ms van Wijngaarden would not give prices for the penthouses, which each would have a pool, but said they would start at $20,000 a square metre.
That would make them worth at least $10 million each, which would better the Gold Coast penthouse record of $9.2 million, set at Main Beach’s Liberty Panorama building in 2012.
The building, designed by the Surfers Paradise-based Archidiom group, is being marketed across Australia and to expatriates living in South-East Asia.
The Au’s interiors are the work of Sydney designer Greg Natale.
The tower, which ASF says will be under way by March, comes 14 years after Sydney developer Mick Bezzina embarked on the 17-level beachfront Jade building in Northcliffe Tce, Surfers Paradise.
Prices at Jade, where every whole-floor apartment has a pool, started at more than $4 million but a mortgagee later sold one for $2.5 million.