THE PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT REVIEW
security over the family home. He renovated before discovering he needed planning and building permits, then opened before learning he required a gym licence. Six weeks later, his father died from multiple myeloma. Three grandparents died within another devastating stretch of months. The studio had almost no income, $150,000 of debt and his parents’ house behind it. “What was my option?” Gurner says. “It was to go bankrupt at 20. I wasn’t going to let them take my parents’ house. ”He rebuilt the client base and sold the studio for almost exactly enough to clear the debt. There was no windfall. Instead, he learnt about selling, accounts and solving problems for which nobody had prepared him. “I would give everything in a heartbeat to have my dad back,” he says. “When you lose your dad and three grandparents, nothing comes close.” Two mentors helped turn that resilience into a business method. Pride taught him sales and positioning. Property developer and publisher Morry Schwartz taught him taste, loyalty and the power of brand. Gurner first noticed Schwartz through a St Kilda Road billboard. While competitors promoted apartments from $299,000, Schwartz declared his project “worth every million”. Gurner thought he was either mad or brilliant and talked his way into a job. Schwartz introduced him to architecture, art and carefully constructed desire. More importantly, he gave the young developer belief. “He looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Tim, you’re the best I’ve ever seen at this. You will be successful and you have to do it. There is no option.’” After building UrbanInc with architect Danny Ciarma, Gurner established his own company in 2013. A branding adviser suggested putting his surname on the business. He initially rejected it as egocentric. Her argument was that if trust and quality were the promise, his reputation should sit on every building. The name became both an asset and an obligation. FV became a defining test. Thakral committed about $48 million. The first release sold 335 of 350 apartments in a weekend; the second took sales to roughly 640. Multiplex signed on to build the first two towers and ANZ financed them. Then Gurner launched the final tower without fixing its construction price - a departure from his own rule, before opening those three envelopes. The rescue took a year. Extra development rights were secured, part of the retail space was sold and Icon was contracted at about $92 million. Gurner estimates the final stage lost between $15 million and $20 million, although FV remained profitable overall. The experience stripped the glamour from rapid growth. It also reinforced his belief that scale, diversification and enduring capital relationships offered protection. That philosophy eventually transformed the business. A $150 million Qualitas partnership provided committed equity for larger build-to-sell opportunities, while a separate build-to-rent platform attracted sovereign wealth capital. Qualitas co-founder Andrew Schwartz challenged Gurner to think beyond individual projects. “You still talk about projects as if they’re important,” he told him. The shift was from assembling developments to building an institutional real estate, wellness and lifestyle platform. Ahmed Fahour became executive chairman and, in June 2026, Adam Gregory took over as group CEO. Gurner calls himself a creator, not a conventional chief executive. He remains immersed in floor plans, commercial terms, lighting, menus and member complaints. “I do everything,” he says.
“So the expectation is you will do everything. ”Saint Haven is the next expression of that instinct. Gurner began developing the concept in 2021, when gyms and private clubs were closing and he was told the timing was absurd. The first club opened in Collingwood in 2023. The idea completed a circle. Before property, Gurner wanted to study osteopathy. His first company was My Wellbeing. Now wellness is the bridge between the business he built and the one he wants to take around the world. Saint Haven is not, in his description, a gym. Annabel’s and Soho House are reference points, but late nights, heavy meals and alcohol are replaced by training, recovery, preventive health and social connection. LVMH is the corporate model. The target is 50 major cities, with Dubai and the United States intended to prove the international model. It is a different kind of risk from property. An apartment buyer may wait five years to judge a product. A club member can text Gurner immediately because an ice bath is too warm, the coffee is cold or a physiotherapist is unavailable. Gurner enjoys the immediacy. Members tell him the club helped them through illness, divorce or a business crisis. The clubs have also forced a socially anxious founder to become more available. Not every experiment has worked. SAINT, conceived as a younger, more accessible format, will be converted to Saint Haven. “We don’t like the model,” Gurner says. Protecting the principal brand matters more than defending his idea. There was no master plan connecting property and wellness. A marketing executive simply observed that both businesses served the same affluent customer, broadly between 40 and 70, who values design, community and longevity. “That was definitely no strategic plan,” Gurner says. “It was just fluke.” Gurner’s public image suggests unbroken certainty. His own account is crowded with fear, wrong turns and moments when chance arrived precisely when needed. Confidence, in his telling, is not the absence of doubt. It is moving while doubt remains. His public comments have also brought controversy, from his smashed-avocado remarks to his 2023 comments about unemployment and workers. He later apologised, calling the remarks wrong and deeply insensitive. Reporters appeared outside his house; security was required and his daughters heard comments about their father at school. “I would love to say I can ignore it all,” he says. “But it hurts. It really hurts.” What protects him now is Aimee and their three daughters; the executives who remained through failed tenders, lockdowns and controversy; his mentors; and the farm, where the family cuts wood, lights fires and walks together. Asked what remains to be achieved, he answers immediately. “So much,” he says. “I don’t know what I have achieved that I think is enough. ”That force is now directed at Saint Haven: a developer’s detail, a salesman’s instincts and the brand ambition learnt from Morry Schwartz. Its future depends on reproducing something intensely personal without making it ordinary. The day before Colin Gurner died, he wrote a note to his family wishing for the world to slow down and for people to live a simple life. “You can imagine that rings in my head a lot,” Gurner says. “I’m probably not following his advice right now. ”Then he thinks of the farm. “But I actually do when I’m out of work. I do.”
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September / October 2026 – 5
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