From Eureka Tower to Mirrastone: Benni Aroni’s Next Chapter

Benni Aroni’s path into property began with an unlikely auction. After a partner at his Melbourne law firm embezzled more than $30 million from the trust account and fled to Cambodia, the firm’s trajectory shifted. Aroni chose property. Architect Nonda Katsalidis had approached Aroni and his brother-in-law with a site at Southbank and a vision: to build the world’s tallest residential tower. Neither man had development experience. They bought the site anyway. That project became Eureka Tower. Asked how he knew the vision was worth backing, Aroni says the confidence came from the people around him. “I had incredible faith in Nonda,” he tells The Urban Developer . “He was a visionary even at that time.” Katsalidis introduced Aroni to architect Karl Fender, a meeting that Aroni says was “formative”. He rates Fender among his most influential collaborators. Working alongside both men shaped Aroni’s approach to development. “It was never just about concrete,” Aroni says. “It was about creating places for people, spaces, experiences. When people like Karl and Nonda look at a place, it’s completely different. It’s another dimension.” ▲ Benni Aroni has shaped how Melbourne lives vertically. Now he’s turned his attention to how regional Victoria grows. While many may say the property landscape right now is somewhat bleak, Aroni sees no shortage of opportunity. The conditions to capture it are another matter. Victoria faces, in his assessment, a feasibility environment running roughly 30 to 40 per cent behind New South Wales on revenue numbers, a gap he attributes to taxes, construction costs and an erosion of market confidence. Demand is not the problem. Getting the settings right is. “Everybody does want to live in this state and in this environment,” Aroni says. “It shouldn’t be this hard. They make it incredibly hard.” The solution, he says, requires genuine collaboration between planning, development, construction and capital, something he describes as structurally absent from the industry. “I came from litigation law and criminal law, and I had never seen conflict like property and development,” Aroni says. Early contractor involvement and integrated capital delivery are showing early promise, but the pace frustrates him. “I’m confident we’ll get there,” he says. “The only question is if we’re going to get there kicking and screaming, and over what timeframe.” Asked what the city of the future looks like, his answer starts with product. Apartment living, build-to-rent, studios and “alternative tenure” models all have a role to play, as does horizontal supply. Less personal transport, more diverse price points, greater flexibility in planning are the building blocks we need, Aroni says. “We have all the fundamentals,” he says. “It just needs people with the brain power of the Nondas and the big builders to be given a fair runway.” Precincts like Fishermans Bend and E-Gate are, in his view, “transformative opportunities” if infrastructure investment keeps pace. “Put a couple of train stations where they need to be,” he says. “It’s mind-blowing how much opportunity exists if we could just get our act together.” ▲ Aroni says regional demand is underserved and undersupplied. Fringelily Estate in Stawell—the town’s only new development—is an example of Mirrastone’s push into regional Victoria. Regional housing is another area where Aroni sees scope for improvement. Lot sizes have reduced from around 500sq m to 150 or 250sq m in many communities and he says the quality of amenity has retreated with them. “There is a lot more community that could be created,” Aroni says. Working with Mirrastone’s founders, Charles Agius and Pasquale (Pas) Garofalo, he is focused on building the group’s regional offerings and brands across Victoria, where he says demand from people seeking to live outside the capital is both sustained and underserved. Politics, Aroni says, cannot be separated from the development equation. Like many Victorians, he is eager to support a change of government but he’s critical of the Victorian Opposition’s move to reintroduce objection rights and wind back activity centre reforms. Aroni describes it as a retreat to electoral self-interest over long-term planning and “not big picture thinking”. “What we need to do is start thinking what’s good for all of us, not just about a three-year election cycle,” he says, adding that global polarisation is also a threat to the kind of collaborative, long-term thinking the property industry needs right now. Three years at Hickory, where he helped strengthen the group’s balance sheet, build out its data centre construction capability and embed a new executive leadership team, ended on June 30. “They’ve got terrific executive leadership,” Aroni says. “And I know the next challenge will be just as exciting.” That next challenge is continuing his work with Mirrastone. “The opportunities there are endless,” he says. “The regional demand and the regional communities they create are so eye-opening.” At 70, Aroni still loves a challenge and shows no signs of backing down from them. “I get excited by fixing things, particularly when I’m told it’s impossible. That’s why I’m going nowhere.” Aroni is due to join other industry leaders at Urbanity-26 to examine the forces driving Australia’s property market, from geopolitics and inflation to interest rates, returns and real value.

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ExclusiveLeon Della BoscaThu 02 Jul 26

From Eureka Tower to Mirrastone: Benni Aroni’s Next Chapter

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