Harry’s high ambitions for more in Surfers
High-rise emperor Harry Triguboff, who has a seemingly insatiable appetite for Gold Coast projects, is sniffing around yet another Surfers Paradise tower site. The interest comes as the 90-yearold developer, in an age-matching ambition, is planning to build a 90level building on another site in the tourist hub.
Its apartments will look down on the city’s highest apartments – in Harry’s 18-month-old Ocean tower, which runs up to 76 levels on the Surfers oceanfront.
A source close to the latest potential Triguboff buy says the land is not on the beachfront but previously has had a tower approved for it.
If a deal was to go ahead, it probably would be the cheapest buy the $23bn developer would have made in Surfers.
He’s spent $235m on Surfers land since 2016, with $177m of that outlaid since mid-2021.
His smallest buy has been the $34.35m spent on acquiring threequarters of what is know as the Vomitron site on the western side of Surfers Paradise Blvd.
That’s where the 90-level building comes in.
Harry, after buying the holding, won approval for three towers but he’s had second thoughts. One tower has been dropped and the taller of the remaining two, subject to planning approval, will go to 304m.
It well could qualify to be called a super super-tower, dwarfing his 261m Ocean, Sunland’s 245m Q1, and the Juniper group’s 243m Soul.
The second tower on the Vomitron holding will be 263.5m, or a mere 77 floors.
Harry won’t be 90 when the lanky 90-level giant pokes its head above ground level – he turns 91 on March 3.
Meanwhile, a new Surfers buy would further endorse High-Rise Harry’s already bullish view on the future of Surfers Paradise.
He has work well underway on twin towers in a project called Iconica at the northern end of The Esplanade, buildings that will be 76 and 50 levels.
Groundwork has started on the former Vomitron site, where Harry and wife Rhonda used to complete against each other at putt-putt.
Plans for what could be another large venture on the oceanfront have not been revealed.
Harry’s Meriton group a few months back signed up for what is known as The Shore site, which fronts The Esplanade, Ocean Ave and Surfers Paradise Blvd.
A large part of that site, which cost $67.5m, is occupied by a 53-year-old tower and there’s no sign of it being knocked down in a hurry.
The decision to trim one tower from the Vomitron masterplan doesn’t reflect a great shrinkage in the number of apartments – the figure will fall by 37 to 1310.
The planned 90-level tower will be home to 690 titles.
Harry, in another change to his original plans, is dropping short-term letting out of the equation.
That doesn’t mean he won’t have a Meriton Suites hotel in one of the towers.
The owner of Australia’s largest chain of hotel properties is a very fluid operator – he has been known to turn apartments into hotel suites when sales are slow, as he did with the twin Meriton towers at Broadbeach many years ago.
The property veteran is not the only Triguboff-related developer busy in Surfers.
Ilya Melnikoff, a one-time Hollywood actor who is a grand nephew of Harry, is undertaking a posh 35-floor tower, Escape, on the beachfront in Garfield Tce.
MOVING PIECES
David Devine, a property veteran who once ran a listed development company, has shuffled his stake in Surfers Paradise beachfront amalgamation target the President building.
He’s moved his four apartments, which cost him $3.12m, into a new entity, half owned by Parity Property’s Jamie Garden, at $3.364m.
David owns the other half of the company.
The President is a 13-floor building that’s more than 50 years old and sits on a 1533sq m site on Northcliffe Tce, south of where David is undertaking the up-market Royale tower on a $45m site.
An unnamed Victorian group, in tandem with a funds manager, also has bought into the building.
TARGET FOR TOWER
Mick Ellison, best known as twice being the host at Main Beach bar and grill Mano’s, seems a certain target in a Sydney developer’s move to put together a tower site in the suburb.
Five years ago Mick and wife Lynette, former residents in the Malibu tower, bought a three-level Mountbatten Ave villa from Harvey Norman CEO Katie Page for $1.332m.
The other villa on the site has been bought, for $2.3m, by developer Steve McMillan who has spent close to $13m trying to assemble a site for a proposed 35-floor building.
BEACHFRONT SALE
Clark Kirby, who’s riding along as CEO at Village Roadshow, and wife Sara have halved their holding on the beachfront at Mermaid Beach and pocketed $8.65m.
The 405sq m Hedges Ave site was bought for $5.15m in 2019 as part of a $10.3m deal which included the threelevel house next door, which has been retained by the Kirbys.
The new owners of the Kirbys’ sold lot are fund manager Ashley Burtenshaw and wife Jane, of Clayfield, Brisbane.