Developer Wins Approval for Surfers Paradise Tower

Sydney developer Weiya Holdings has been given the green light to build a 38-storey beachfront tower on what some are calling the Gold Coast’s hottest half-kilometre.

The Gold Coast City Council signed off last week on a development application for the luxury residential tower, to be known as Aalto, at Garfield Terrace in Surfers Paradise.

Developer Weiya Holdings plans 67 luxury apartments in total—a mix of one, two, three, four and five-bedrooms. Six of them will each take up an entire floor.

The 1500sq m lot currently contains a single-storey house plus a three-storey apartment block.

Patrick Pancur, sales and marketing for Weiya Holdings, said demolition of these two buildings had begun. A six-month pre-sales marketing campaign would begin immediately.

In a report prepared for the council seeking a material change of use lodged in December last year, the Saunders Havell Group said the tower would be 128.8m high and include 4.5 levels of parking for about 150 vehicles.

Pancur said two-bedroom apartments would be priced from $2.2 million and three-bedroom from $3 million. Apartments across an entire floor would be $8 million and up.

The building is by national design firm Conrad Gargett and will feature outdoor living spaces plus amenities including lobby, spa, gym, lounge, bar and pool.

▲ It is the second beachfront Gold Coast development for Weiya Holdings.

Conrad Gargett director John Flynn said the landscape had been a key driver and influence behind the design of Aalto, maximising its corner location and prime beach frontage, while taking cues from the site’s history and the beach’s natural sand formations.

“The original landscape of the ocean, beach and dunes, continuing through to the waterways, has been broken over time by buildings, so by lifting the tower up off the ground we’ve been able to create greater transparency, which has been one of our key design moves,” Flynn said.

“We were also inspired by longshore drift which is the natural movement of drifting sand and water along the coastline, with the building’s edges and form responding to the ripples, deep recesses and cut-outs that occur in the sand as a result of this natural process.”

The development is at 75-79 Garfield Street, a street that, with adjacent Northcliffe Terrace, has set new benchmarks for absolute beachfront land with rates nudging $20,000 a square metre and beyond.

It’s the second beachfront development for Weiya Holdings, who have announced they’ve sold out their De-Luxe Burleigh Heads development.  That 28-apartment building—under construction and also by Conrad Gargett—sits on the site of the old Burleigh Theatre Arcade, which dated back to 1930.