Wager on potential

Ami Weinstock’s Coomera acquisitions point to a plan which will reap rewards once the centre is built

A SYDNEY property investor who tends to fly under the radar appears to have taken a $9 million-plus Westfieldflavoured fancy to Coomera.

Ami Weinstock, whose family fortune in part has been built on furniture, has quietly bought two large sites on the doorstep of the evolving Coomera Town Centre and the suburb’s train station.

The 68-year-old investor, who arrived in Australia from Israel as a boy in 1954, has added them to a property portfolio that takes in a home in Sydney’s elite Vaucluse suburb, industrial, office and retail assets.

Most notable, and the most publicised, of the Weinstock buys appears to have been the $10 million purchase in 2014 of the Bronte house of media industry personality Lachlan Murdoch and wife Sarah.

At Coomera, Ami’s new acquisitions appear destined to blossom in value and development potential once the town centre is up and running.

The Westfield-operated centre’s expected to greet its first customers late next year.

Ami’s buys, through company Canjs, total close to 6ha in George Alexander Way.

The first has been bought from receivers and the second from the Queensland Government.

The zoning on the two sites, “centre” means Ami, should he choose to develop them, can do just about anything – from high-density apartment buildings to things such as shops, medical centres, or even motels. It’s unlikely Ami would get the nod to underdevelop the properties with what one property fellow calls “typical Coomera stock” – freestanding homes and townhouses.

That means their real potential is down the track – when the town centre is up and buzzing and people want to live right on its doorstep, close to the train station and within a stone’s throw of the highway.

One of Ami’s two sites, at 31 George Alexander Way, in 2014 was mooted by nonperforming delisted company Sabina Corporation for a $300 million development that would include shops, a hotel, a medical centre and more than 400 apartments.

The plan was a fizzer and ultimately the 3ha holding, in which Sabina had a 40 per cent stake, was grabbed by a receiver and snared by Ami for $4.675 million.

The investor also was Johnny on the spot when the State Government put 2.9ha at 17 George Alexander Way on the market, securing it for $4.427 million.

Unsurprisingly, some of the players who have been making hay in the Coomera-Pimpama area appear not to have been “contestants” for the sites won by Ami.

They tend to focus on selling ready-to-go house blocks and probably aren’t interested in getting into high-density apartments, an option open to Ami.

AT COOMERA, AMI’S NEW ACQUISITIONS APPEAR DESTINED TO BLOSSOM IN VALUE ONCE THE TOWN CENTRE IS UP AND RUNNING.