Gimme: Kelly Slater’s $2 Mill Gold Coast Crib!

Roughly a hundred footsteps tween tile and sand… 

Palm Beach is what you would call a recovering suburb, at least if you wanted to be kind. There’s a veneer of hipness, like most of the Gold Coast, but you don’t have to scratch too hard to find the hopelessness that lays just beneath.

Dirty apartments with kids curled under dirty fur blankets. Open cans and cigarettes on the floor. The TV on a perpetual whining cycle. Unemployment (yeah, there’s a social security building on the beachside of the highway) is its major trade. Welcome to Palm-y.

But then there’s the beach, a stretch, five or so miles long, from first avenue on its southern border to 28th in the north. It’s sand so the quality varies but, often, with the wind out of the south, and the swell a little east, you’ll be struck by how good it gets. I lived there for a few years and found it a sublime escape from the crowds and the predictability of the points.

Maybe it’s why Kelly Slater just dropped just over two mill for a whole-floor beachfront apartment, with its own lift access, on sexy little Jefferson Lane.

Shall we stroll through its features, as offered by the real estate pages?

“A boutique low-rise that consists of 7 levels, one unit per level with absolute, pure beachfront luxury! Designed to embrace natural light, capture panoramic views from Surfers Paradise to Coolangatta and offer alfresco beach balcony living all year round…Each level is accessed by a security-coded lift that opens directly into your home.

“It comprises an ultra-modern style of architecture and has reset the benchmark for quality beachfront apartments with high quality fixtures and fittings and standard of quality finish throughout.”

It ain’t Frank Lloyd Wright, architecture wise, though there are notes of Mies van der Rohe, at least in spirit, but what is on the Gold Coast?

Y’got plenty of room and, best of all, it faces due north-east, which means the stiff summer heat is tempered by a sea breeze.

It isn’t Kelly’s only Gold Coast crib. Ten years ago, he bought a little apartment, with no views, in Tugun, just south of Palm Beach, for $445,000.

Note: all photos are from the same building but not Kelly’s exact apartment.