Back to the future for Coast developer
AMOVE to retreat from running a public property company and return to the private development sphere isn’t in the future for the men atop the Sunland Group – they already are doing it.
Chairman Soheil, who was a ‘private’ developer until 27 years ago, and son Sahba are stakeholders in a family-linked company that’s unobtrusively been undertaking projects on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane for five years.
Pacific Development Corporation, owned by Soheil and siblings Sahba and Mona, owns 25 per cent of Australian Residential Corporation, which has built villa and townhouse projects and is in the process of heading upmarket at Mermaid Beach.
The Abedian entity’s also a shareholder in a company which has signed up for a $5 million site at Miami.
The Pacific Development activities look mere flirtations compared to what appears to lie ahead for Soheil, 71, and Sahba, 45.
They have a deal, in tandem with Mona and sonin-law Riaz Rezvani, to buy the Greenmount resort at Coolangatta from Sunland for $42.3 million.
The purchase, if it gets a green light from Sunland shareholders, won’t settle until April 2022.
The company is exiting Greenmount in an asset selldown that indicates that within three years it will have returned all of its cash to shareholders and might not exist as a listed group.
The clearance sale could see architect Soheil pocket around $130 million.
The Pacific Development role in ARC, in addition to holding a stake and possibly providing funding, might well be a mentoring one – some of ARC’s projects show Sunland-like design touches.
The directors of ARC are Tom Jamieson, Soheil’s stepson, and Khian Abedian, son of former Retravision store operator Sep Abedian and wife Flora.
Tom, 30, has a New York degree in architecture and Khian, 32, is a Bond business graduate who’s worked as a housing and logistics manager in Haifa, Israel.
ARC’s initial projects took in areas such as Brisbane’s Everton Park and Burleigh, with a duplex foray at Miami completed in late 2019.
The duplex villas sold for up to $1.147 million but the price bar’s been hoisted at a pair of townhouses being built in Mermaid Beach’s Seabeach Ave – they have been marketed at $2.75 million each, with one under contract.
A repeat could be on the way in another Mermaid Beach street, Ocean Ave.
Soheil was the bidder at a November auction of a 405sq m site, bought through an ARC entity, with the $1.997 million deal settling early this month.
Last month a company in which Pacific Development is one of three shareholders bought a three-title residential holding in a street on the beach side of the Gold Coast Hwy at Miami.
The other shareholders are two Iranians in their 30s – Hessam Ghahramanian and Navid Jahromi.
The return to the private sphere is a turning back of the clock for architect Soheil, who stepped away from the Abedian’s Oriental Rug business in the early 80s to set up Sunland with friend Foad Fathi.
They initially focused on building luxury homes, including one for Gold Coast realtor the late Max Christmas, and many at Sanctuary Cove.