Melbourne Developer Readies Third Southport Project

Melbourne-based developer Property Solutions Australia Group has lodged plans for a boutique apartment project in Southport, its second development under way on the Gold Coast.

An eight-storey residential block has been proposed for a 1000sq m beachfront site at 77 Pohlman Street which was purchased for $1.1 million in mid-2021 and is currently occupied by a two-storey house built in the mid-1970s.

PSA Group, led by Fabio Rossi, has again turned to local architect and long-standing design partner BDA for the project.

BDA is responsible for PSA Group’s completed Southport development, The Mill 137, which comprises 27 apartments. Nearby, the developer is advanced on The Mill 135, another 27-apartment project, and also by BDA.

Its latest proposal, a few blocks back from Main Beach, will offer 36 two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartments—five per level across the building’s lower levels and three on its penthouse level.

The proposed apartment building includes a ground-floor lobby, gym and yoga space, and will be topped with a rooftop terrace. 

It will sit above a single level of basement carparking, providing 37 spaces as well as six for visitors, 16 bicycle spaces and motorbike spaces. 

PSA Group pursued the site due to its proximity to the Nerang Street Light Rail Station, Queen Street Village and the Southport Health Precinct.

▲ The apartment block, if realised, will hold ocean and Broadwater views from its upper levels. Image: BDA Architecture

Established more than decade ago in Melbourne, PSA Group specialises in the multi-residential and townhouse sector.

The group has delivered 18 projects in that time, mainly in Melbourne’s outer suburbs, including Wembley Gardens in Melbourne’s Donvale and Eleven93 in Highett.

It has three projects in Berwick, south-east of the city’s CBD, now under construction.

PSA Group has been increasing its presence in south-east Queensland in recent years with a mooted project at Beenleigh in Brisbane’s south-east. 

The Gold Coast—a battleground for site acquisitions and awash with high-rise development project applications in recent months—has been feeling the pinch from sky-high construction costs and crippling labour shortages.

Developers have felt the brunt of the estalations in a market with fewer big building companies compared with Sydney and Melbourne.

In the face of multi-million-dollar cost blowouts interstate, high-rise developers have continued to flock to the construction hotspot where Gold Coast units are now among the most expensive in the state—at a median price of $680,000.

Propelling demand for new development has been record house price growth on the Gold Coast, increasing by 36 per cent in 12 months, which in turn has pumped up land values by almost 40 per cent since 2020.