STREETS ABOVE THE REST
From 50 pounds for a parcel of land, to US troops camped on the beach, Hedges Ave has had a winding road to the city’s most exclusive address
IT’S hard to believe but there was once a time you could buy a beachfront house on the Gold Coast’s most exclusive street for less than $1m.
Hedges Ave is the Gold Coast’s most exclusive address, home to mansions, millionaires and sporting stars.
With absolute beachfront access and no high-rises, it is famously known as “millionaire’s row”.
While Hedges Ave has come to prominence in the past 30 years, its history stretches back more than a century.
It was named after William Hedges, a shop owner who moved into real estate after World War I.
He spent much of the 1920s selling blocks of land around what is today called Hedges Ave and at one point owned more than 32 acres across the region.
In 1923 the area went through a significant real estate boom with land values skyrocketing.
Parcels of land Mr Hedges had bought for 50 pounds jumped in value to more than 200 pounds.
He died in 1943 but his legacy would live on, with many of the cross-streets with Hedges Ave now named for he and his family members.
During World War II the scrub-filled land was used as a campsite for US troops, who named it Los Angeles Beach.
By the late 1950s, Broadbeach
was beginning to boom, with the construction of the Lennons Hotel and the subdivision of surrounding blocks.
Through the 1970s Cronin Island was the city’s hottest address and was the first location to post a $1m land sale.
But its heyday was brief as the real estate market took off and Hedges Ave became a focal point.
Among those who moved to the area at the time was businessman Terry Jackman.
Born in Brisbane, Mr Jackman bought a beach shack to have a Queensland home while he was based in Sydney.
“I bought my first house on Hedges Ave in 1980 for $200,000,” he told the Bulletin this week.
“It was just a shack, like most of them were at the time, but now there is only a handful left.
“Of course, back in those days people did not know how to build against the conditions.
“One of my neighbours at the time had his family around to his house one Christmas Day and went to his open his fridge, only to have the door fall off because the salt had eaten away at the metal.”
In 1984, the average price for 405sqm beachfront lots in Hedges Ave was $330,000.
A year later a handful of properties surpassed $500,000 for the first time.
It rose to $750,000 by the mid-1990s during a period in which Hedges Ave was dubbed “the golden strip”.
By the late 1990s it had been renamed “millionaire’s row”.
In January 2000, a rundown beach cottage on a 405sqm corner site sold for a record $1.34m or $3308/sq m.
In October 2020, the price per square metre was four times that at $12,098, with a knockdown beach shack on 405sq m selling for $4.9m.
Over the decades Hedges has attracted many of the city’s most famous residents, including developers, sports stars, businessmen and celebrities.
Among those to have called Hedges Ave home are former Australian cricketer Craig McDermott, Olympian Grant Hackett, businessman Clive Palmer and developer Brian Ray.
In the late 1990s some of these power players, including Mr Jackman, joined forces to oppose a proposal by the Gold Coast City Council to create a second seaway through the centre of Hedges Ave to Broadbeach’s canal system.
“It’s like saying there is a problem in Manly and putting a seaway through the Corso,” Mr Jackman said at the time.
“I am trying to find out anywhere else where it is proposed to put a 100 metre-wide seaway through a shopping centre, main road, residential precinct and a domestic street. You have to hand it to the Gold Coast City Council – it would be another first for the region.”
The proposal was knocked on the head.
In recent years Hedges has undergone further changes, including becoming the first street on the Gold Coast to have its speed limit lowered to 30km/h.
Residents have also long opposed plans to extend the Oceanway footpath south of Broadbeach in front of the beachside mansions.
While council is yet to approve the project, it is expected to move forward in coming years as part of the extension of the light rail and improvements to the area’s transport infrastructure.
The biggest change was the council giving the green light to Sunland Group’s $250m 252 Hedges Ave luxury tower, which is now under construction.
Hedges Ave has changed a lot since the 1970s but the desire for its expensive property remains strong among buyers with deep pockets.