Max Liberman inspired at 72 to create Adelaide CBD's first high-rise homes at Garden East on East End market site

Part of Max Liberman's vision for high-rise residences on the former East End fruit and produce market site.

Max Liberman, regarded as the father of modern housing development in South Australia, created Garden East, Adelaide’s first CBD high-rise housing, in the East End.

In 1993, aged 72, Liberman came out of retirement in Sydney and returned to Adelaide to tackle revitalising the “bomb site”: the relics of the East End fruit and produce exchange that closed in 1988.

Liberman Group developed nine award-winning residential buildings known as Garden East, where the old market sheds and warehouses once stood.

Born in Egypt to Austrian parents, Mr Liberman migrated to Adelaide in the late 1940s and became involved in some of Adelaide metropolitan area biggest housing developments, most notably West Lakes. In 1992, West Lakes won the inaugural FIABCI international Real Estate Federation’s Prix D’Excellence in Switzerland as the world’s best housing development.

Liberman saw the East End residential project as the opportunity of a lifetime, despite the controversies that its multi-storey buildings generated.

He believed high-rise accommodation was necessary to make Adelaide competitive in the national and international marketplace and remained a strong supporter of Adelaide’s changing cityscape.

Mr Liberman’s vision turned a dilapidated tin shed precinct into part of a $100 million residential and commercial hive.

In 1970, Mr Liberman had transformed a swampy wasteland into West Lakes, one of the state’s most popular lifestyle estates, in what was then the largest housing project by private enterprise in Australia.

Liberman had already developed barren dry farmland into the suburb Para Hills and later became the chairman of companies including RDC Holdings Ltd, the West Lakes Corporation and the Delfin Property Group.

He was also the chairman of the SA Housing Trust 1976-81 and spearheaded developments including Clovercrest, Modbury, Tea Tree Gully, Klemzig, Tranmere and South Lakes at Goolwa.

He was most proud of West Lakes and East End developments.