THE developer behind four blocks of upmarket flats in Canford Cliffs has said its directors “fell in love” with the area.

A launch event was recently held for the first of the buildings at Crosstrees, a development of 44 homes at Lilliput Road.

Riccardo Dawson, head of design at developer Shape Real Estate, said the idea for the Poole developments had come after the directors got to know the area.

“A couple of them have yachts at Sandbanks Marina and came down and fell in love with the place. It wasn’t driven by a site coming up and us taking advantage of it. We fell in love with the area and that whole lifestyle and then we started looking for potential places that we could add something positive to the area,” he said.

He said the business had three more possible sites lined up.

Prices for the two and three bedroom homes near Compton Acres range from £595,000 to £1.895m for the penthouses.

Mr Dawson said Shape Real Estate started in the Midlands in 2012. “We’ve expanded into London in the last 18 months and in the last nine or 10 months we’ve really started focusing on Poole, Bournemouth, Canford Cliffs, Sandbanks etc,” he said.

The design of the flats is intended to reflect superyachts and the town’s nautical tradition.

“When we first came down to Sandbanks, we were kind of consumed by the lifestyle and the local vernacular and how beautiful the place is,” said Mr Dawson.

“It’s so picturesque that we started to talk about what bits of that we could feed into the interior design.

“Initially we started looking at this idea of the superyacht and this nautical theme where in the interior design nothing is superfluous, everything has a point and is there for a particular reason. There’s no excess. We wanted that to be part of Crosstrees.”

He said focus groups had informed the design of the scheme. Much modern development was “too financially and planning driven”, he said.

Mr Dawson said the company was interested in Lilliput and Canford Cliffs rather than the ‘Millionaire’s Row’ of Sandbanks.

“The trend is turning away from Sandbanks slightly,” he said.

“As soon as you start putting homes or apartments on there, the prices in those areas really shut out any normal people. That’s not really what we’re about.

“We’d rather do more exciting schemes in up and coming areas where we can do something positive to the area than just building a £10m house in Sandbanks.”

He said the owners of the houses that previously stood on the Crosstrees site “bit our hands off at the opportunity to sell up”.

“They had come into a bit of a state of disrepair,” he said.

“Canford Cliffs is a very expensive area. The amount of money it would have taken those owners to bring their properties up to a level where they could attract a decent price was just not viable. When we came along, everyone was really happy with it.”