Mimi’s Aspect looks to be sunk
MIMI Macpherson, a former whalewatching queen who submerged financially after a foray to the Gold Coast, might not want to be “watching” if a Burleigh Heads property deal plays out.
A boutique luxury apartment building which was her pride when it was completed 17 years ago could become a pile of rubble.
Aspect on Burleigh, overlooking the ocean at 112 The Esplanade, is under conditional contract to a company which obviously sees its 1011sq m site as under-utilised.
That company is the Brisbane-based Spyre group, which is buying the building for $16.15 million if its due diligence sees the purchase stack up as a redevelopment proposition.
Mimi, the sister of supermodel Elle Macpherson, built Aspect in tandem with Andrew Pappas via PM Developments.
Aspect was designed to a nautical theme and marketed as “a slice of oceanic elysium”.
The project became what Mimi later termed “a tough learning curve”.
The sail-shaped Aspect’s seven apartments and twolevel
penthouse did not exactly sail out the door – the first sold in 2003 and the last in 2007.
Mimi’s sojourn on the Gold Coast started after the multimillion-dollar sale of her Hervey Bay whale-watching business in 2000.
The excitement over launching Aspect, with construction funding from Mark McIvor’s later-failed Equititrust group, gradually dimmed and her seas became somewhat choppy.
At one point Mark Jewell, former GM at the Sunland Group, was called in to give her a different aspect on Aspect.
During construction there was a dispute over payments and workers walked off the job.
Aspect’s Melbourne architect sued over unpaid fees in a case that lasted four years and ultimately led to PM Developments going into liquidation.
At one point Mimi became involved in plans for a Southport tower called Luxe but she exited the mooted project before it was aborted and the site sold at half its original cost.
The ultimate ignominy came when Mimi faced a third drink-driving charge in 2007 and then was bankrupted in 2008 with $8 in the bank and owing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Spyre, the group doing its homework on Aspect, first set foot on the Gold Coast in 2016 when it bought a Broadbeach site and went on to embark on a 21-floor tower, Elysium.
The group, headed by Daniel Laruccia and Andrew Malouf, has also launched a boutique tower, Maya, at Kirra.
If Spyre does decide to go ahead with its Burleigh buy, it will own a site with the potential to take a far taller building – Aspect sits between the 15level Element tower and the 17-floor Southern Cross building. Synergy, in a best-case scenario, also could go to 17 levels.
The last new apartment building on The Esplanade was Barry Morris’s Boardwalk, which was completed 14 months ago and has 128 titles.