Media
Kingdom Divides
The West Australian
12 March 2006
A successful tuna fisherman is fishing for investors in a prime piece of South Perth riverfront. Lex Kingdom made his fortune landing Japan’s favourite fish, but is turning his hand to property development.
For 20 years he and his family lived in a house on the corner of South Perth Esplanade and Queen Street. And now the time has come to downsize, Mr Kingdom is not going to move, he is going to redevelop.
He has commissioned architect Barry Baltinas to design a five-story Art Deco building that will house just three apartments.
“Lex was walking in Kings Park when he saw the Miami Apartments which had our sign out the front and gave me a call,” Mr Baltinas says.
“At first I didn’t know whether to take him seriously or not, but when I realised where we were talking about, I did.” Mr Baltinas says the development will have parking, common areas on the ground floor, three storeys of apartments and a shared entertainment area at the top.
“Because he is building for himself, he has to have the best of everything,” Mr Baltinas says.
“With the design, we have curved the building so that every room will have river views, or at least glimpses. Even after the site next door gets developed you will still be able to see the river from the spa. And the apartments are big – they’ll have 220sqm of internal space and 50m of balconies.”
The building will have curved glass and ship-like details typical of Art Deco.
Dee Seed is selling two three-bedroom apartments for $4.3 million and $4.5 million.
The Kingdoms will live in the third.