A COMPANY that wants to deliver affluent Main Beach apartment buyers the opportunity to admire their expensive cars without leaving their lounge chairs might be an “unknown” but it’s quietly been cruising below the surface.
Ignite Projects has just completed and settled a 31-apartment building overlooking Palm Beach.
The building’s chosen name, Periscope, doesn’t reflect Ignite’s virtually nonexistent profile on the Gold Coast.
It never stuck its head up during the construction or marketing of Periscope, a project for which one reference in the Bulletin was in a list of Palm Beach apartment projects wearing cranes.
Now the Kiwi owners of the group can’t avoid the limelight, by virtue of their ambitions. Main Beach plans for a building with a mere 11 apartments.
The 23-level The Monaco, designed by Rothelowman Architects, is planned on a tight 483 sqm site at 2 MacArthur Pde.
It is intended to offer opulence and, with a retail value of $50 million or more, is a step up from the $20 million Periscope in every way.
For instance, where Periscope prices peaked at $1.12 million, the two-level apartments that will be dominant in The Monaco are expected to average more than $5 million apiece.
A two-level penthouse, which will have a rooftop area with pool, isn’t being marketed.
The men behind Ignite and The Monaco are Gold Coast-based Josh Foote and diverse Auckland developer Garry Gordon.
They worked together in New Zealand 15 years ago and teamed up for Periscope.
The 42-year-old Josh, a project manager who crossed the Tasman in 2011, earlier cut his Gold Coast development teeth with a small Tamborine subdivision.
Ignite apparently wants to become a premier developer of small sites — like The Monaco one.
It’s also set out to be known for the points of difference in its projects — it was a forerunner in the Palm Beach development burst in 2016 and “upped” Periscope by including a residents’ pool on the roof of the eight-floor building.
The major point of difference, and talking point, at The Monaco is the plan to have two car lifts — one for basement parking and the other servicing one-car glass-encased parking galleries in each apartment.
They’ll allow owners to drool over their Rolls-Royces and Aston Martins without leaving their apartments.
Another so-called point of difference likely to be touted is the offer to have buyers design their own Italian-made kitchens, the logic seemingly being that if you “win over” the cook you’re a long way down the path to achieving a sale. The Monaco site is occupied by an older-style block of units called Sunorama and is in front of the Ron McMaster-built Pintari tower.
Ignite, which isn’t disclosing what it is paying for the units, has a code-assessable development application before the city council. The group’s also reportedly been eyeing other Gold Coast sites and one on the Sunshine Coast.