Hard work and a focus on objectives may seem like a simple formula for success but it’s one that has served Luke Saraceni well.
Hard work and a focus on objectives may seem like a simple formula for success but it’s one that has served Luke Saraceni well.
The new president of the Property Council, patron of the Claremont Football Club, and member of the Western Australian Planning Commission (WAPC) board attributes his achievements to a lot of hard work, and believes football and business have many similarities.
“You don’t get to be a champion footballer only on natural talent,” he told WA Business News.
“By the time you are at an elite level every player has the same abilities, and the ones that succeed are the ones that are committed to training harder and longer.
“It’s just hard work that creates success.”
Sitting in the boardroom that once belonged to Alan Bond, Mr Saraceni is certainly making his mark in Western Australia. He’s involved in several commercial, retail, and residential developments throughout Perth, including Raine Square, a design competition for which will get under way this week with a completion date around 2007-2008.
Mr Saraceni spent eight and a half years as a planner for the Shire of Swan before starting his own planning consultancy, where he worked for five years before joining his largest client, Westpoint, as a partner.
Mr Saraceni sold his interest in Westpoint in 1995 to start Saracin Properties.
“As a shire planner your life is spent vetting developer applications, and as a consultant you spend your life trying to get approvals, and redesigning things to get approved, so it is an excellent background from which to come to do what I do,” Mr Saraceni said.
“Being a private company allows for a lot more strategic decision making than a public company, which has to constantly increase profits in order to deliver to shareholders.
“I don’t have to make bad decisions just to create immediate turnover, and can use a lot more long-term strategy in the decisions I make.”
Mr Saraceni retired in the mid-1990s but then, citing the challenge of what he does as his main motivation, came back to work a few years later, because “organising a golf day with your friends who aren’t retired is as hard as any job”.
“Property is like a chess game – when it gets to the stage when you have a number of projects and have been doing it for a while, it is not just the money, but achieving the task and putting in the ground what you set out to do,” he said.
The divergent views between planners, developers and governments present yet another challenge. Mr Saraceni said his one criticism of local government was that the political implications of planning decisions played too great a part in the decision-making process.
“Things are either correct from a planning point of view or not – every council has its planning schemes and policies, and if it fits, it should be facilitated,” he said.
“I am a member of the WAPC board and I do not agree with a blanket height control over the coast in WA – any planner or architect worth their salt will say that approach is flawed, and will create the worst rather than the best results.”
Mr Saraceni has his own view of the direction he would like Perth to go, including greater use of the river and more public art and public space to bring a more ‘human’ element to the city.
“I’d love to see a landmark art feature in the middle of the Swan River the size of a 30-storey building – imagine what that would do for Perth,” he said.
Luke Saraceni
Luke Saraceni is a very busy man.
He is involved in the development of several Office-works super stores, two BBC hardware stores (now Bunnings), a joint venture to redevelop the Woolworths shopping centre in Murray Street (sold last year), a joint venture to develop the CSC building in Subiaco, a joint venture to release 600 lots in Port Geographe, and the 2,000-lot Vasse Newtown development in Busselton.
Mr Saraceni owns Busselton Woolworths and two other suburban Woolworths, and Raine Square, which he purchased last year with partner Hossean Pourzand for $21.5 million.
