Central Element Breaks Ground On $150 Million Pearl Bondi
For Central Element, the start of work at Pearl represents another step in the company’s growing eastern suburbs pipeline.
3 min
Central Element has officially commenced construction on Pearl Bondi, its highly anticipated $150 million luxury residential project in the heart of Bondi Beach.
The development at 20–22 Sandridge Street will comprise just seven residences: two houses and five apartments. That tightly limited collection gives Pearl a markedly different character from the larger apartment projects reshaping other parts of Sydney.
Architecture has been entrusted to MHN Design Union, while Madeleine Blanchfield Architects is responsible for the interiors. Together, the two practices have been tasked with creating homes that respond to Bondi’s coastal setting while delivering the privacy, space and refinement expected at the premium end of the eastern suburbs market.
Central Element is acting as both developer and builder, giving the company direct oversight of the project from design through to construction and completion. Kinkora is the joint venture partner, with MA Financial providing project funding.
The official groundbreaking on Friday brought together senior representatives from the development, design, construction, finance and sales teams.
Attendees included Central Element general manager Dean Chivas and CE head of construction Adrian Banks, alongside Madeleine Blanchfield, founder and director of Madeleine Blanchfield Architects, and Amanda Stollery, director at MHN Design Union.
They were joined by Kinkora investment manager Tony Massaro, MA Financial investment manager Heath Grundy and Ray White Projects managing partner Eddie Mansour.
Nathan Chivas, Managing Director of Central Element, spoke to the vision behind Pearl and the significance of bringing such an ambitious, design-led project to market in Bondi.
“We’ve brought together a team of acclaimed local design talent who understand Bondi intimately and share our passion for crafting something extraordinary that honours its setting.”
For Central Element, the start of work at Pearl represents another step in the company’s growing eastern suburbs pipeline.
The milestone follows the recent completion of Ballamac House in Coogee, where Central Element sensitively restored and transformed a historic residence dating from the 1860s into a collection of eight luxury homes.
Pearl carries that focus on tightly held locations and limited residential collections into Bondi Beach, although with an entirely new architectural proposition. Its combination of five apartments and two houses also gives the development a broader mix than a conventional boutique apartment building.
With construction now under way, attention will turn to how the project’s architectural and interior concepts are translated into the completed residences.
In one of Australia’s most closely watched property markets, the small number of homes, experienced project team and central Bondi location make Pearl a significant addition to the suburb’s next generation of premium residences.
Project details
- Project: Pearl Bondi
- Address: 20–22 Sandridge Street, Bondi Beach, NSW
- Development value: $150 million
- Residences: Seven—two houses and five apartments
- Developer and builder: Central Element
- Joint venture partner: Kinkora
- Funding partner: MA Financial
- Architecture: MHN Design Union
- Interior design: Madeleine Blanchfield Architects
- Sales: Ray White Projects Eddie Mansour
- Listing: Pearl Bondi
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A five-bedroom Palo Alto home designed by Steven Ehrlich is listed for $44 million, making it the city’s most expensive listing. Built around a dramatic concrete spine, the home features four courtyards and a pool.
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For years, tech entrepreneur Asher Waldfogel and his wife, Helyn MacLean, dreamed of building a modern house in Palo Alto, Calif.
The couple, however, worried about clashing with the Mediterranean-style architecture typically associated with their neighborhood of Old Palo Alto.
So they tapped architect Steven Ehrlich to create a design that paid homage to its surroundings with stucco, mahogany and titanium zinc cladding. They spent $20 million over several years building the house, completed in 2005.
Now looking to be closer to their adult daughter on the East Coast, they are putting the five-bedroom home on the market for $44 million—the most expensive listing in Palo Alto.
Waldfogel is an angel investor who co-founded Redback Networks, a telecommunications-equipment company. MacLean previously had a career in fundraising.
The couple purchased the roughly 0.4-acre site for $7.1 million in 2000 and demolished a circa-1930s Spanish Colonial home. The house they built pinwheels around a central staircase. It has 7,900 square feet of livable space, with four distinct courtyards and a pool.
A key feature of the home is a cast-in-place concrete wall, or spine, that is two stories high and about 80 feet long. “There’s a little bit of controlled chaos in what comes out of the form,” unlike a perfectly uniform surface, Waldfogel said. “If you want that, you do it in plastic.”
Waldfogel said he and his wife are thinking about the next phase of life now that their daughter is grown, although they have not decided where they will move. They also have a home in Sun Valley, Idaho.
“Right now we’re just trying to emotionally let go and decide what to do next,” he said.
Palo Alto, an epicenter of venture capital and tech startups in Silicon Valley, is home to some of the country’s biggest tech titans. Sales volume and prices are rising, with a median sale price of $3.5 million for the three months ending in August, up 5.8% year-over-year, according to real-estate brokerage Redfin.
Arthur Sharif of Sotheby’s International Realty—San Francisco Brokerage has the listing.
From the shacks of yesterday to the sculptural sanctuaries of today, Australia’s coastal architecture has matured into a global benchmark for design.
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