Harry Triguboff to quit "volatile" Gold Coast market after one last high-rise hurrah

Harry Triguboff to quit "volatile" Gold Coast market after one last high-rise hurrah
Larry SchlesingerDecember 7, 2020

Harry Triguboff will quit the Gold Coast apartment market after completing construction of Meriton's Stellar Apartment project at Southport. 

The Meriton website confirms that Stellar will be its “last development on the Gold Coast” following the release of the final stage of its $1 billion Brighton on Broadwater project.

The residential tower is set to rise to 55 levels and featuring around 500 apartments as well as over 30 shops, an on site recreational complex with indoor heated pool, sauna, spa and gymnasium, overlooking the Broadwater and Nerang River.

Off-the-plan sales of Stellar apartments have yet to begin, but interested parties are asked to register their details with Meriton.

When completed it will be the tallest tower in Southport, designed by DBI architects, and featuring, one, two and three bedroom apartments with views of the Broadwater, Pacific Ocean and Surfers Paradise skyline.

Around 600 apartments in Brighton on Broadwater have been retained as serviced apartments - a market Meriton sees as key to its future growth.

Triguboff, who turned 80 earlier this year, told the Gold Coast Bulletin the Gold Coast market was too volatile with developers needing assistance.

His comments suggest he will continue to focus his developments around Sydney, where he has been building up a large war-chest of inner city and suburban development sites.

Harry Triguboff (pictured below), who built his first two-story development in the Sydney suburb of Tempe in 1963, described Sydney as “economically solid” and a “big and old city”.

Harry-Triguboffjuly24

"The Gold Coast is still building up,” he said, with developers put off by its booms and busts.

The news that Meriton will exit the Gold Coast after 17 projects will come as a blow to the local real estate industry, developers and investors, given the negative publicity around the local high-rise apartment market and the failure of other high profile high-rise projects.

Triguboff suggested an intriguing solution to the Gold Coast market – offering differential interest rates.

"For instance, if mortgage rates were 5% in Sydney they could be 3% or 4% on the Gold Coast,” he said.

Triguboff’s first developments on the Gold Coast were the Nelson and Florida developments, in the early 1980s.

In the mid-1990s he built eight residential towers on Main Beach, Southport.

He returned to the city in 1993, snapping up a succession of Main Beach development sites and building eight towers in the beachside suburb.

More recently he has focused on Brisbane with two high-rise apartment projects - the  completed 74-level Soleil tower, currently the city's tallest and Infinity, which will rise to 81 stories when completed in early 2014.

Larry Schlesinger

Larry Schlesinger was a property writer at Property Observer

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