Price right to start project
WORK is to ramp up in earnest on a rare Far North unit development at Yorkeys Knob.
The brainchild of Brisbanebased developer and former Cairns resident Troy Price, Whitehaven Apartments at 6-8 Wattle St will feature 21 two-bedroom units when completed later this year.
The units will be priced from $430,000 when they hit the market this month.
The project, worth more than $10 million, hits close to home for Mr Price, who played at Half Moon Bay Golf Club with his grandparents while growing up in Cairns.
The Price & Partners director also has pedigree in Far North development.
His grandfather Pat moved to the region after World War II and built a Port Douglas resort, now known as Coconut Grove, while his dad Wayne spearheaded several major projects in Cairns.
It comes eight years after his last Far North development, a series of luxury townhouses at Clifton Beach.
“Jay Beattie (of Colliers International Cairns) rang me and said there was a fantastic property up here, just off the Yorkeys Knob esplanade,” Mr Price said.
“It’s a dream to be able to build Whitehaven Apartments as our signature development.”
Keir Constructions is the principal contractor for the project, which is scheduled to finish in “August or September”.
Mr Price said slabs would be going down this week.
He said the Far North’s surging tourism sector and tight rental vacancy rate were influencing factors in the development.
“We now have multiple international markets interested in Cairns, not just the Japanese but China and a host of South-East Asian countries,” he said.
Suburb real estate agent Terry Loftus of Bragg Real Estate said the development was a great “vote of confidence” in the region.
Cairns’ December quarter vacancy rate was 2.4 per cent, according to real estate industry body REIQ.