Tycoon Tim Gurner locks major Queensland expansion

The luxury developer has solidified his Queensland presence with a new office in Brisbane after establishing a $2bn pipeline of work in the Sunshine State.

Luxury developer Tim Gurner has solidified his Queensland presence with a new office in Brisbane after establishing a $2bn pipeline of work in the Sunshine State.

The move is the culmination of a five-year push into the market and opens up the door to pursue further opportunities in Brisbane, the Gold Coast and the surrounding area.

Mr Gurner’s national pipeline now exceeds $10bn, with more than $2bn of that now focused on Queensland across six residential towers and existing investment assets. In the coming years, the business hopes to position between 10 and 15 per cent of its pipeline in the state.

The Melbourne-based businessman said the massive interstate immigration through the pandemic had created an acute shortage of apartment stock and opportunities in the market. He added that the relative affordability and job opportunities set to arise in Queensland’s southeast in the lead up to the Olympic Games in 2032 had set the region on a growth trajectory.

“We sort of have had a bit of a breather, still looked at opportunities up there, but we just kind of wanted to watch what was happening in the apartment market,” Mr Gurner said.

“It wasn’t overly active up there, but over the last two years … we started to have a bit of a look for a bit further down south and the Gold Coast and Burleigh and all the actions down there and the big reason is Covid has really changed Queensland a lot.

“Rather than being a little coastal town, the Gold Coast has become a very serious city centre of Australia and having that in Brisbane, in a similar proximity made sense for us to have a real presence and take it seriously and get a lot more serious about it like we are in Melbourne and Sydney.”

Developer Tim Gurner is setting up a new office in Brisbane with Robert Cooke and Jaime Cali. Picture: Supplied

Mr Gurner has recently appointed Jaime Cali as the Queensland project director, joining the team after five-and-a-half years as project director of the Destination Gold Coast Consortium. The company also recently hired Rob Cooke as the chief delivery officer.

The new office will complement Mr Gurner’s Melbourne headquarters and Sydney office.

Work is currently under way on Mr Gurner’s $1.5bn La Pelago island precinct, which is expected to hit the market sometime in 2023, consisting of four residential towers and a hotel. Other projects also include a recently acquired Burleigh development and a 250-plus apartment project in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley.

Mr Gurner expects the challenging construction conditions to continue into next year but believes he benefits from being “completely burned” through a tough 2015 and 2016 period, when construction costs blew out by about 50 per cent in the mist of building the half-a-billion-dollar FV project in Fortitude Valley.

“It was one of the hardest 18 months of my life and definitely helped me and my team … set up risk structures and how we look at markets and how we need to be able to move very quickly,” he said.

Capital costs have moved up significantly and construction has also jumped considerably over the last 12 months, particularly in Perth and Queensland, and “that’s going to hurt a lot of people”, Mr Gurner said.

The FV project was completed in 2017, featuring 1000 apartments over three 30-storey towers.