Harvey Norman billionaire has put together top-shelf waterfront apartment development

GERRY Harvey, superretailer, is getting all his ducks in a row to offer some super specials on the Gold Coast.

These “specials” will be topshelf offerings – luxury apartments in a super spot where owners will be able to sit in plunge pools and watch cruisers sail by.

They’re earmarked for land the 78-year-old billionaire has accumulated, over a decade, fronting the Broadwater at Runaway Bay at a cost of more than $22 million.

All up, the Harvey Norman co-founder plans 42 apartments over two tracts of land separated by a couple of properties – one of them housing a big apartment owned by his wife and Harvey Norman managing director, Katie Page.

These Raunik-designed “specials” all are expected to be in the $1 million-plus class, making the Magic Millions coowner’s foray potentially worth $70 million or so.

The apartments – 11 on one site and 31 in the other – are earmarked for Poinsettia Ave, a quiet street immediately south of the Runaway Bay marina.

Harvey’s entrepreneurial plans involve four buildings, each of four levels, and are subject to the city council giving them the nod.

The area apparently caught his eye back in 2007 when he wandered over to Runaway Bay to have a look at Katie’s purchase a year earlier, and for $1.45 million, of two apartments in a luxury boutique building.

She’d merged them.

The Broadwater frontage, and its possibilities, obviously stirred the Harvey brain and it and refurbished wasn’t long before the chequebook came out.

Eddy Groves, the later bankrupted founder of ABC Learning, had been trying to quit three Poinsettia Ave blocks he’d assembled for $8.7 million.

When an auction failed and he couldn’t achieve his $12.5 million target, racehorse breeder Harvey trotted in with an $11 million offer that was grabbed.

He’s since added two adjoining properties, giving him a peninsular-like 3905sq m site with both Broadwater and canal frontages.

A further two buys a couple of doors away have given Harvey a second site that covers 1234sq m. The no-nonsense businessman isn’t going into his Runaway Bay venture as any sort of novice.

His real estate activities, apart from assembling a $2 billion plus portfolio for Harvey Norman, have seen him acquire apartment sites around Australia and develop everything from shopping centres to dongas in mining towns.

At Poinsettia Ave, the planned Harvey apartments all will have either three of four bedrooms and some will have plunge pools.

The buyers being targeted obviously will be people of substance – they’re unlikely to be looking for Harvey Norman five-year interest-free funding.

THE BROADWATER FRONTAGE ... OBVIOUSLY STIRRED THE HARVEY BRAIN AND IT WASN’T LONG BEFORE THE CHEQUEBOOK CAME OUT