The Gold Coast-based Director and CEO says his over 50s lifestyle resorts have 8000 homes across 28 greenfield sites underway or in the pipeline in Queensland, NSW and Victoria with an end value of more than $6 billion.
GemLife is owned by the Puljich family and Singapore's Thakral Capital. Adrian said his new venture Aliria has the backing of National Australia Bank.
He told News Corp's Australian Business Network about the family dynamic. His father Peter, who arrived in Australia in 1968 as a refugee and was a self-taught plasterer, bought a caravan park on the Gold Coast in 1982. It was then converted into one of Queensland’s first land lease communities which became Living Gems. The family business was part of life for brothers Vlad, Branko, Anthony and Adrian, who was the youngest.
“I pretty much lived in a household where it was talked about morning and night,” said Adrian, 36, who studied at Bond University and trained as a lawyer before joining the family business.
Adrian joined the family business in 2010 and ran Living Gems with the business doubling in size over the next five years. In 2016, the family launched GemLife with Thakral Capital. Seven years later there was the operational merger of GemLife and Living Gems which combined has delivered more than 3600 homes across 19 private gated communities and it is one of the largest privately held operators of land lease over 50s lifestyle communities in Australia.
Adrian said his father Peter was “still very much involved with the business”. Vlad retired in 2023 and Branko left a number of years ago after being in management roles in the business for 20 years and 15 years respectively. Anthony joined the business in August this year. Communication was key in the family business, he added.
“We all have different ideas and ways to manage growth so its good having honest dialogue and being a family business allows you to thrash out those issues in a lot more direct manner rather than dancing around the subject and being politically correct,” Adrian said.
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