KICK IN THE JEWELS
New owner rips apart city’s biggest project because he doesn’t like the bathrooms
THE Gold Coast’s $1 billion Jewel towers are about to undergo a major demolition job tipped to add months and millions to the ambitious project. Why? Because its 23-year-old owner, Huang Jiquan, doesn’t like the bathroom finishings and says the day spa and conference centre are in the wrong spot. “The spa had been set out. It’s an 800-millimetre slab (of concrete) so who knows how long that is going to take,” a source close to the project said.
THE Gold Coast’s billiondollar Chinese-backed Jewel towers face a major demolition job and overhaul, tipped to delay the ambitious project for months and add millions to its cost.
Hundreds of hotel bathrooms in the under-construction middle tower at Surfers Paradise beachfront are to be ripped up and redone, sources reveal.
A day spa with plumbing set into a concrete slab in the southern tower would also be torn up and relocated into the northern tower where conference rooms had been under construction.
The conference centre is understood to be relocating to where the day spa was in the southern tower, a source said.
The changes – hard on the heels of new owners Yuhu Group last week taking over Wanda Group’s 55 per cent share – would cost millions, an industry source estimated. Yuhu is Jewel’s sole owner after Yuhu’s AWH Investment Group Pty Ltd settled on Ridong Group’s 45 per cent share in February.
“It is going to be crazy,” a source close to the project told the Bulletin.
“You often get certain variations and changes here and there on a project but nothing like this. The rumours were changes could be coming but we thought surely not – and then we were told yes it is. I couldn’t believe it.
“The spa had been set out, they put all the plumbing into a concrete slab. Now that has to be deleted and reconfigured. It’s an 800 millimetre slab so who knows how long that is going to take.”
Company records show AWH is wholly owned by Cloudstone Capital, created two weeks before Ridong’s Jewel sell-off. The sole shareholder is 23-year-old Huang Jiquan, a Guangzhou-born Australian citizen whose father, Huang Xiangmo, is founder of Yuhu Group.
Mr Huang, in confirming the purchase from Wanda, said their “vision can be summed up as ‘built to last’ rather than ‘built to sell’.”
A source on the overhaul said: “All the rooms are fine but all the bathrooms, (Mr Huang Jnr) apparently doesn’t like the fit out so they all need to be pretty much pulled down and demo-ed and refitted.
“It just doesn’t make sense. All it is doing is costing more money to go back and start again,” the source said.
“There will be all the time demoing, cleaning it up, getting the rubbish out of the tower and then starting again.
“It will be months of work.”
In a statement at the time of the takeover, Yuhu Group indicated it would “reposition” the pricing, product and even project name.
Asked yesterday about the demolition of bathrooms and the day spa-conference centre swap, a Yuhu Group Australia spokesman indicated more changes could be on the way.
The spokesman wouldn’t comment on specifics “of any planned upgrades” but stressed Yuhu was “committed to delivering only the highest standards of interior fit out and design”.
“We are continuing to explore opportunities to further enhance the project.”
It remained on schedule for completion by mid-2019, the spokesman said.
A Jewel source said adding floors to the high-rises – to be 34, 40 and 46 storeys – was ongoing but overhaul work was awaiting final prices for demolition and new materials. “Once it is all ticked off the boys will be ripping everything down and redoing it all.”
It is understood hotel bathrooms on the first five to six floors of the middle tower had been completed while those from there to floors up to the early twenties were ready for sparkies and plumbers.
There are about 15 units with bathrooms per floor meaning – conservatively – 300 plus face demolition and rebuilds.