Icon apartment development in Milton stalls, leaving concrete eyesore

Work on a Chinese-backed $175 million 260-apartment inner-Brisbane development appears to have stalled, leaving local residents stuck with a concrete eyesore even though sales information claims “most of the units” are already sold.

WORK on a Chinese-backed $175 million plush inner-city residential development appears to have stalled in the latest sign Asian investors have lost confidence in the troubled Brisbane apartment market.

GH Properties, a local subsidiary of Hong-based private company Golden Horse Nine Dragon Lake Holdings, has pulled up stumps on its heavily promoted Icon apartment towers in Milton which included a dual language website to attract Asian investors.

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The botanical oasis-themed development comprised more than 260 apartments across two 19-storey towers that included a rooftop lounge garden, pool and landscaped sky bridges.

The site was cleared in 2017 and work started on the Walsh Street project with the construction of a five-level basement to accommodate almost 300 vehicles.

However, the site has been abandoned for several weeks after Hutchinson Builders removed scaffolding and cranes.

The expectation versus the reality of the Icon development at Milton.

The site has been boarded-up with no visible means of access and ‘private property’ stickers plastered around the perimeter wall.

All that is visible from street level is two three-storey concrete structures in an increasing gentrifying residential precinct near Milton Railway station.

GH Properties director Ellen Guan did not answer questions about why the development had stalled, if new owners were being sought or if apartment owners would obtain refunds.

“Thanks for your attention to this project. We are making every effort to move forward with the project,” she said in a statement.

The stalled Icon development in Milton. Picture: Darren Cartwright

The website promoting Icon contains a five-minute explanatory video that states 65 per cent of Milton households “are renting” and that it’s the preferred postcode of “highly educated professionals” between the ages of 25-34.

The sales department is still operating although no apartments are on the market.

“We already sold most of the units and the company wants to keep some for staff themselves,” the sales staff member told The Courier-Mail.

According to Icon’s website the development was designed by Jackson Teece architects and the project manager was the PDS Group.

Hutchisons Builders chairman Scott Hutchinson said they had been treated fairly by GH Properties “and they were a good client”.

GH Properties is not the first Chinese-linked property developer to face headwinds in the increasingly tough Brisbane unit market.

An artist's impression of what the Icon development should look like.

Chinese state-owned infrastructure giant China Railway Construction Group is being chased for $40 million by creditors after the collapse of a Queensland building venture working on a number of inner-city apartment buildings.

Chinese demand for apartments and harbor-side mansions helped drive a property boom that fuelled prices hikes on the east-coast in the five years to 2017.

But Chinese investment in real estate dropped to $12.7 billion in 2017-18 from $15.3 billion the year before as Australian banks tightened lending and Beijing tightened capital outflows.

Overall, the number of apartments under construction in inner Brisbane has plunged over the past year, while the amount of units being marketed over the same period also fell.

JLL’s first quarter Brisbane Apartment Market report found that apartments under construction in inner Brisbane fell 36 per cent in the previous 12 months.

Over the same period the number of apartments being marketed dropped by 59 per cent.