Melville’s condos average 925 sq ft, priced $500-plus per foot
Malcolm Parry
Sun
Amacon president Marcello de Cotis showed the Melville’s $10-million penthouse as David Brooke and Melissa Stefanopoulos enjoyed its lap pool
NINE, TEN, YER IN: Other boxers found it impossible to knock out amateur light-welterweight Marcello de Cotiis during the ring career from which he retired at age 26 in 1997. Today, as president of the family held Amacon development firm, he almost stretched himself on the canvas recently. It was a canvas lounger beside the lap pool of the $10-million, 5,800-square-foot penthouse de Cotiis demonstrated at Amacon’s $146-million The Melville tower at Melville and Bute Street.
Sister Lilliana, who is Amacon’s sales-and-marketing director, was an even likelier candidate for stretching out. She’d married contractor Vito di Franco in Ontario the day before, then hot-footed home alone to join selling agent and Anson Realty principal Grace Kwok at the penthouse unveiling.
The Melville’s condos average 925 square feet at $500-and-some per foot. They’re also building a 200-unit mixed-use tower nearby at Homer and Smithe that will incorporate the old Homer Diner premises.
Amacon also has projects in Port Coquitlam and Surrey, but its major gigs are further afield. De Cotiis said it recently restored a Montreal office building, is rejuvenating a 34-floor, 160-unit building in downtown Los Angeles, and is seeking to rezone a five-hectare Edmonton site for mixed-use development.
Its biggest project, in Mississauga, Ont., will eventually contain 6,500 housing units, de Cotiis said. A 300-unit tower is built, with a 315-unit one under construction and 328 units about to start.
“I’m ready to retire again,” said de Cotiis, whose stretching out now occurs mainly in back-and-forth aircraft seats.
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ULTIMATE PENTHOUSE: City businessman Randy Bishop is asking $18.2 million for his two-floor, 6,900-square-foot penthouse at 1000 Beach Avenue.
It fetched $3 million unfinished in 2004, following which Bishop reportedly spent “millions” on it.
As for the penthouses of towers still under construction, the most costly will be the Shangri-La development’s 5,900-square-foot unit, complete with its own lap pool, at Georgia and Thurlow Street. Asking price: $15,630,000.
An adjacent 4,000-square-foot penthouse isn’t for sale. It’s already been claimed by Shangri-La co-developer Ian Gillespie for occupancy by him, wife Stephanie and their two children.
As for action on Bishop’s pad, Shangri-La realtor Bob Rennie said: “We’re watching the price of Beach Avenue, and monitoring whether we should raise ours. And I’m sure Grace Kwok is doing the same thing.”
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BRANDING THE WATER: False Creek North’s 1.4-million-square-foot Millennium Water project was given sharper focus in a grocery chain’s boardroom Wednesday morning. That’s when Overwaitea directors were briefed on the Urban Fair store that will serve, among others, the $1.1-million-worth of condos Peter and Shahram Malek’s Millennium Group is building there.
The Urban Fair supermarket that now essentially brands False Creek North was built only years after Concord Pacific began erecting residential towers ton the old Expo 86 site. This time, it’ll be in situ from the start.
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FALSE CREEK, REAL MONEY: Wall Financial Corp head Peter Wall did handsprings in April 2006, when the Maleks bid $193 million for Millennium Water’s 2.6-hectare site. That price almost doubled the $130 per buildable foot developers then paid for downtown land. It also jacked up the value of property Wall owned across First Avenue from the Maleks‘ acquisition.
The four-tower, 425-unit project to be built on that site was officially named Wall Centre False Creek last week. The original Wall Centre occupies the city block bounded by Burrard, Nelson, Hornby and Helmcken streets. Wall Centre Richmond, now having its site pre-loaded at Number Three Road and Sea Island Way, will house a 234-room Westin hotel and 231 condos in two towers.
All but 27 of the latter sold in a frenzied weekend offering recently, when Wall offered $25 Great Canadian Casino chips (not necessarily for gambling) to anyone who showed up. Maybe he’ll do the same with chips for across-False Creek Edgewater Casino when Wall Centre Three goes on sale late next spring.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007