END TO THE CONFUSION
There was toing and froing among the Coast’s hotel plans last year but things look sound for 2018
There was toing and froing among the Gold Coast’s hotel plans last year but things look sound for 2018.
A NEW hotel is on the boil in Surfers Paradise, a move that has brought a positive end to what has been a mildly confusing 2017 in the hospitality segment of the property game.
The potential newcomer is earmarked for a site overlooking the beach on The Esplanade and it won’t be a massive structure. The word is it will have fewer than 300 rooms and is planned on land occupied by a block of older-style holiday apartments.
It’s on the drawing board as two new hotels are under way south of Surfers, plans for two others literally have gone south, and there are suggestions that a Surfers hotel quietly might be on the market.
The Esplanade holding assembled for the latest hotel project is in an area that successfully has been targeted by site amalgamation practitioners in moves that already promise to deliver two other new hotels.
One of those will be on a large site assembled for Singapore-based hotel and resort chain Banyan Tree at the northern extremity of The Esplanade. The hotel will be in one of the two towers that will make up what is being called the $500-million Cassia Northpoint.
Slightly further north, on Main Beach Pde, Honkers billionaire Tony Fung hopes to this year fire up work on a sixing hotel for which he has development approval in place.
Then there are murmurings in the background that a Chinese group is mulling over a hotel foray on a site back from the beach in Ferny Ave.
South of Surfers the Jewel project’s hotel is heading skyward and at Broadbeach’s Star casino a six-star beauty is rac- toward completion and another tower with a hotel component is in the pipeline.
At the northern end of the city, Chinese company Golden Horse hopes to gallop into action with its planned 150-room, five-star hotel overlooking The Links golf course at the Hope Island Resort.
The hotel confusion that crept into 2017 came in the form of ambitious plans for new hotels in the hearts of Surfers and Southport.
Those plans indeed were “grand” – the Grand Central in Southport’s Scarborough St and the Grand Gold Coast in Surfers Paradise’s Orchid Ave.
Both projects were linked to entities associated with Newstar castle lawyer Wayne Roddenby and involved funding from Royal National Capital Alliance, which is licensed to operate managed investment schemes. It appears funding machinations, tracing back to Chinese money, got in the way and the sites for both projects today are on the market, with hotel approvals in place.
Adding to the 2017 hotel confusion has been a claim that Japanese travel company H.I.S. might be looking to exit its 21-year-old Watermark property in Surfers.
A buyer reportedly carried out due diligence a few months ago before aborting a deal that would have included the chain’s Brisbane hotel.
THE HOTEL CONFUSION THAT CREPT INTO 2017 CAME IN THE FORM OF AMBITIOUS PLANS FOR NEW HOTELS IN THE HEARTS OF SURFERS AND SOUTHPORT