GERRY SELLS UP
PULLS PIN AFTER PROJECT DRAMA
NO-nonsense billionaire Gerry Harvey has torn up plans for a luxury apartment venture at Runaway Bay.
The co-owner of the Magic Millions is going to sell the bulk of his $22 million-plus landholding beside the Broadwater.
The 79-year-old retailer hoped to build 31 posh apartments on the larger of two holdings in Poinsettia Ave and 11 on another site two doors away.
The ventures, all up, could have been worth more than $70 million and delivered apartments where owners could have enjoyed such upmarket treats as relaxing in
plunge pools while they watched million-dollar yachts cruise by.
The city council in January last year vetoed the bigger project and a development application for the other one has been allowed to lapse.
The ‘big’ refusal clearly irked the joint founder of Harvey Norman because three weeks after the knockback he filed an appeal with the Planning and Environment Court.
Now, more than a year on, he’s withdrawn that appeal and has aborted the 31apartment plan.
He’s asked the fellow who handled his purchase of the five-title lot, General Realty’s Mark Feltell, to sell it, either as one lot or in pieces.
Gerry’s believed to be tossing up what to do with his smaller Poinsettia site.
No doubt fellow owners in Poinsettia Ave and nearby streets will be dead keen to see what he decides.
The larger of Gerry’s projects drew a raft of objections and they might well have swayed the council.
One objector, from across the water in Howard St, described the planned Harvey building as bulky, boring and monstrous.
The city council decided the project, at four levels, was too high, not appropriate for the area, and covered too much of the site.
It also was deemed as not achieving a “high quality urban design outcome”.
Gerry’s not the first person to have grand plans for the waterfront end of Poinsettia Ave, a tranquil street that has the Runaway Bay marina property on its northern side.
Eddy Groves, while his ABC Learning group was in its heyday and solvent in 2006, snared three adjoining lots at a cost of $8.7 million.
He planned a pavilionstyle mansion with an adjoining guesthouse but aborted the idea and tried to sell the 2784sq m holding for $12.5 million.
After a 2007 auction failed, Gerry rolled up with an
$11 million offer and he and Eddy did business.
That was the start of Gerry’s ‘business’ in the street – he added two adjoining properties to create a 3905sq m site with both canal and Broadwater and frontages.
The super-retailer also snared nearby two sites totalling 1234sq m.
Gerry’s decision to abort his major Poinsettia project comes on the heels of his wife, Katie Page, canning plans to build a 16-level tower beside the Broadwater at Labrador.
The tower, Ripple, was destined for a site overlooking the Broadwater bought in 2007, the same year Gerry paid Eddy $11 million.
The seller to Katie was none other than you-knowwho, yes, Eddy Groves.