JV Plans 2,000 Apartments, Retail on 12 Acres

QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA-Lend Lease Corp. and Daikyo Australia have formed a joint venture to develop up to 2,000 apartments and an entertainment and retail complex on 12.3 acres at the northern gateway to Surfer’s Paradise, a city on the south side of Brisbane. The development properties, bounded by Ferny Avenue and the Gold Coast Highway, are slated for as many as 12 residential towers over the next 10 years, according to Lend Lease.Daikyo Australia parent company Daikyo Inc. is Japan’s largest condominium developer listed on the Tokyo stock exchange with annual sales in excess of $2.7 billion. Lend Lease and Daikyo have been partnering together since the early 1990s and jointly own the Forest Gardens residential project in Cairns.The Surfer’s paradise project will be developed on a land management basis, with Lend Lease drawing on the land as it is developed. Based on current exchange rates, the end development value of the project is estimated at more than $686 million.Preliminary plans are to develop premium residential projects across the three sites with the existing Gold Coast International Hotel creating a lifestyle destination; the Budd’s Beach site offering a boutique style, urban village; and the current amusement and carpark sites being redeveloped to offer a new concept in retail and entertainment facilities coupled with contemporary accommodation. Lend Lease says it is refining the development concept through a master planning process in consultation with the Gold Coast City Council. It is anticipated that sales on the Budd’s Beach site could commence as early as mid-2005. The development agreement more than doubles Lend Lease’s Queensland portfolio of current or planned projects. Current strategic sites for the company include the redevelopment of two of the country’s premier resorts, the Twin Waters and Hyatt Regency Coolum resorts on the Sunshine Coast. Lend Lease’s Asia Pacific chief executive Ross Taylor says the strategic location of the Daikyo sites give Lend Lease a long-term position at the premium end of the strongly growing Gold Coast market. “The company has been actively seeking strategic sites in south-east Queensland to enhance our development portfolio in this prime market,” says Taylor. “We are very confident in the mid to long-term growth prospects for Queensland, and particularly the south-east corner of the State, and have been proactively re-weighting our national portfolio accordingly over the past two years.”