Harry in a hurry to finish high-rise

This article was originally published by the Gold Coast Bulletin on 26 March 2019 by QUENTIN TOD.

HIGHRISE king Harry Triguboff is putting the construction accelerator down on giant Surfers Paradise tower Ocean in a move that will lead to more than one apartment being built each day.

The veteran founder of the Meriton group yesterday said that he had told his building team to be more vigorous and that he wanted the 75-floor tower finished by the early part of 2022.

“Ocean’s our biggest tower ever in Queensland and it’s going to be our best.”

“It’s also by far the most challenging ever for Meriton in construction terms but my builders have nailed the hard part and within a short time it will be a case of the sky’s the limit.”

“The sooner Ocean sticks its head up, the sooner buyers will be able to see that it’s happening – and it will be happening quickly.”

Mr Triguboff said as part of the move to hasten Ocean’s arrival, the number of on-site staff had been doubled to 120. Once the tower’s podium was completed there could be up to 600 workers on the site.

Meriton has invested $350,000 in a sales and display suite in nearby Elkhorn Ave but is yet to launch the tower. The 75-floor Ocean will have more than 700 apartments, with 446 of them making up a Meriton Suites hotel on the tower’s first 44 floors. Work started on the $58 million site, overlooking the ocean on The Esplanade, in June 2018.

David Cremona, Meriton’s national director of construction, was on the Gold Coast yesterday to finalise the “vigorous” construction schedule of what he termed the most complex tower the 55-year-old group had undertaken.

Mr Cremona said the complexity was due to ground conditions and the tower’s spinnaker-like architectural design. He said one of the critical parts of the build had been completed, with 52 pylon foundations, each 2.1 metres in diameter, bedded into rock 50-metres below the surface.

“To put those pylons in context, you could drop a family car down each hole and wouldn’t touch the sides – you wouldn’t need to fold the mirrors.”

Mr Cremona said Ocean’s engineers had come up with a unique design to solve wind assaults on the 252-metre tower, which was shaped almost like a sail.

“We couldn’t use the traditional tower method of controlling swaying – putting huge water-filled tanks on the roof.”

“We looked at projects around the world and the answer came from bridges such as the Golden Gate, the Brooklyn and Sydney’s the Anzac.”

“They use cables so Ocean’s being built like a bridge that’s standing upright. It will have four 4m x 2m mega columns running halfway up, all with cables running through ducts.”

“Once the thousands of cables are installed they are tensioned up. When the wind loads the building, the cables stretch like a rubber band, therefore reducing the amount of Ocean’s sway.”

Mr Cremona said Meriton expected to complete Ocean’s podium early next year and from then would be building on average the equivalent of 1.2 completed apartments each day.”