Fung bails on $440m hotel plan
TONY Fung, Hong Kong billionaire and racehorse breeder, has stepped his Surfers Paradise sell-off pace up to a gallop by putting a beachfront site earmarked for a $440 million six-star hotel on the market.
The move to sell the Pacific Point site in Main Beach Pde comes as Mr Fung is seeking buyers for the penthouse in the beachfront Soul tower and for a part-owned full city block known as the Vomitron site, previously touted as a possible casino home.
Mr Fung’s Aquis group spent around $24 million assembling its hotel site, which takes in the 17-level Pacific Point apartment tower and two adjoining villas.
No asking price has been put on the site, which is being offered via an expressions of interest campaign run out of Sydney.
A year ago the 1682 sqm holding, which is directly across the road from the beach, was approved for Aquis Pacific Point, a 48-storey hotel with 480 hotel rooms, restaurants, and a “stunning” rooftop pool area.
Aquis, which said a six-star hotel was well overdue on the Gold Coast, indicated construction could start later this year.
The group’s real estate director, Greg Benneworth, said at the time of the approval that the new hotel was likely to be the first pure luxury one, without apartments, developed on the Gold Coast since the Marriott Surfers Paradise at the start of the 90s.
Neither Mr Benneworth nor marketing agent Michael Simpson, of Savills Sydney, could be contacted yesterday.