LARRY Dimasi does nothing in half-measures.
He has built an extensive property portfolio and accumulated “super wealth” over three decades working as a developer in Sunraysia.
He owns the Kmart and Coles buildings in the Mildura CBD, along with a number of local medical and childcare centres.
And then there’s his new 400-lot development on a 90-hectare parcel of land at Mildura South, at the corner of Sixteenth Street and Ontario Avenue.
The first release of 80 lots last year sold out in the twinkling of an eye – and work on stage 2 is now under way.
The Dolfen Developments chief is a well-known property tycoon in the region – but there’s much more to Mr Dimasi than meets the eye.
In a sit-down interview with Sunraysia Daily, the third-generation Italian, whose grandfather emigrated to Australia in the early 1950s, lifts the lid on what makes him tick, revealing a strict diet and fitness regime that sets him up for the day.
He foresees growing pains facing the Mildura municipality, which he predicts will hit a population of 100,000 by 2026.
As we begin the hour-long interview, it quickly becomes apparent how disciplined Mr Dimasi is.
I feel exhausted just listening to the lengths he goes to in keeping his 60-year-old body in great shape.
He works out twice a day, six days a week, in his home gym and meditates for 20 minutes most mornings.
“I do cardio work for 45-60 minutes in the morning,” he said.
“This includes circuit work, time on the bike, skipping, rowing – and then at night I do my strength work.
“That’s a mix of bodybuilding and circuit training. I then have a sauna for 30-40 minutes and after that I have an ice bath.
“I’ve been doing it most of my adult life.”
He also has a black belt in mixed martial arts – and climbed to the base camp on Mount Everest in his 50s.
“I like a challenge,” he says with a smile.
He has a strict high-protein, low-carb diet, eating four times a day – and fasts once a week.
Asked how he manages to juggle all this with the demands of being a high-flying property developer, he sits back and says with a laugh: “I’m high-maintenance.”
The father of two girls – Sofia, 21, a contemporary dance student in New Zealand, and Alexandrea, 23, who is studying maternity nursing – says he made enough money to stop working 15 years ago.
“I don’t want to stop working though.
“Mildura has been good to me and all of my family, and it’s time for me to give back and help make sure we have the necessary services and infrastructure in place for the future.”MR Dimasi, who has a Bachelor of Engineering (Civil and Structural) degree, has been working as a local property developer for the past 34 years and has a good handle on the planning challenges facing Sunraysia, particularly in the growth corridor of Nichols Point, Irymple and Mildura South.
One of his main fears is the Mildura municipality won’t have enough services, such as schools, health, childcare and aged-care facilities, to keep pace with the population explosion.
“I just feel that the Mildura district is going to hit 100,000 in the next five years,” he says.
“And that’s going to put a lot of pressure on various services here.
“I think we’re going to struggle to make sure our services keep pace with the growth. There’ll be a lag.
“We need more primary and secondary schools – and we desperately need a new public hospital.
“There’s an immediate need to boost all of our health services. We don’t have enough doctors in this district.”
He says he is getting inquiries from private doctors to build clinics in the region.
“I’m in the process of looking at a few concepts to make this happen.
“I’m almost ready to open another radiology site in the City Heart.
“But it’s getting the doctors here, which is a problem we urgently need to address.”MR Dimasi has joined recent calls for Langtree Mall – where about a third of the shops are vacant – to be remodelled with a greater focus on a cafe culture and pop-up specialty shops.
“You’ve got to ask the question: what is the main function and use of Langtree Mall as it is now?” he says.
“It needs a different image and to be opened up. More money needs to be spent on the infrastructure itself, rather than just thinking that Band-Aid solutions like a bit of landscaping will work.
“It really needs to be transitioned into a centre with more speciality shops and further enhancement of the lifestyle and cafe culture.
“These are the sort of things that will attract more people into that area.
“Times have changed a lot since the mall was built (in the mid-1980s) and you can’t force something to be what it’s not.”MR Dimasi proudly says Mildura has a “wealth of expertise” to help local and state governments with planning for the region.
He believes more local experts should be steering Mildura Council’s key planning strategies and projects, instead of out-of-town consultants.
“To make a lot of these planning changes, we shouldn’t be looking to consultants in Melbourne.
“We have the expertise here to create these studies – and local people know what local people want.
“After these initial studies are done, we can then link up with the Melbourne consultants.
“So there’ll be a subtle difference that hasn’t been happening for important projects: local experts can control the out-of-town consultants, not the other way around.”THE nationwide property boom over the past year has led to a shortage of building materials right across the country.
Mr Dimasi says that while the median property price in north-west Victoria has increased by nearly 15 per cent since the first COVID-19 lockdown, it’s also led to higher costs for builders.
“As a builder of a major development, I put in big orders for materials such as timber, glass, concrete and bricks – and there are still delays in their arrival here.
“The demand for concrete, for example, is so great that it’s gone up by 17 per cent over the past year.
“The same land-house package I was producing 12-18 months ago is now costing me an extra $20,000 a year.
“Along with this, the fees from authorities – including the water board, power suppliers and council – have gone up dramatically for developers to produce house-land packages.
“Developers aren’t making any more money than we were (before the building boom). It’s just that everything has gone up in price.
“If I was super-confident that I was making a huge amount of money, I would be releasing more than 20-odd lots in the next stage of my Mildura South development.”
