August 17, 2021

Gold Coast development: New luxury tower planned for Kirra Musgrave St site

A PROLIFIC Melbourne-based builder is promising a luxury high-rise on a Mermaid Beach street once tipped as a development hotspot.

Hirsch and Faigen have unveiled plans for Yves, a 26-storey tower on Mermaid Ave.

The company bought the site and its ageing unit blocks for more than $11m in June.

Hirsch and Faigen director Richard Hirsch said the tower was the company’s third Gold Coast project.

“We have carefully selected this site to deliver a high-quality residential offering in a very central pocket wedged between Hedges Ave and Broadbeach, which we will deliver to market on receipt of council approval,” he said.

“We are working on the design plans and looking to bring something very special to the precinct.”

Mr Hirsch said the Gold Coast “has a tremendous future and is incredibly undervalued”.

Yves’ 146 luxury units will be a mixture of one to three bedrooms, as well as a sub-penthouse and full penthouse level.

The project is expected to be brought to the market for sale in December, pending council approval.

The Yves block is directly next to a former Hungry Jacks site long planned for a giant twin-tower project called Elegance.

The tower’s top levels.

The towers, at 47 and 49 levels, were trumpeted as providing a mecca for health and wellbeing.

Pitched in 2015, it was abandoned by developer Hubei in 2019 after the Royal Commission into Banking and changes to foreign investment laws.

These changes stalled $20bn of Asia-linked development.

Hubei still owns the Mermaid Ave land, but it is being used as a car park.

Another tower, called Blade Runner, was pledged for an adjacent site on Mermaid Ave, but was never built despite being approved by council.

Hirsch and Faigen is one of several prominent developers working on multiple projects simultaneously to capitalise on the strong property market.

It is about to begin construction of its Hemingway Palm Beach project while in August it received approval to build Emerson, a 13-storey tower on Kirra’s Musgrave St.

Other big developers progressing multiple projects include Sunland Group and Meriton, which is nearly finished its 76-storey Ocean supertower in Surfers Paradise and is planning a twin-tower development on a nearby site.

Sunland is nearing completion of its $250m 272 Hedges Ave tower and has begun construction on two further towers at its $1.3b The Lanes precinct ahead of building it’s new shopping centre.