Christina Quinn quietly gets on with facelift for CBD investment
CHRISTINA Quinn, no stranger when it comes to rich-list appearances, has been engaged in a spot of facelifting.
The recipient of these new looks, which haven’t come cheap, is a 1980s Southport office building.
The boutique 68 Marine Pde property was snaffled by Ms Quinn, in the quietest of fashions, for $10.5 million in 2017.
Its top floor has become a business base for the lady who, with hubby Tony, kicked giant financial goals with, firstly, VIP Petfoods and then with Darrell Lea chocolates.
The office foray isn’t her first foray into the commercial property field.
When she and Tony went their own ways in 2016, she is believed to have assumed ownership of the leased VIP factory at Yatala and a Darrell Lea property in Sydney.
When she bought the fivefloor 68 Marine Pde building the following year it wasn’t exactly brimming with tenants.
Today, apart from her sitting on the top floor and enjoying smashing views over the Broadwater, there’s only one tenant but a marketing push is under way to add more.
The sole tenant is a group called National Plant and Equipment, which hires heavy earthmoving equipment to businesses around Australia.
It started out with one floor and, apparently encouraged by the Quinn revamp and the prospect of new lifts, has moved into a second floor.
The 61-year-old Ms Quinn, who was born at Dingwall, north of Inverness in Scotland, has some notable predecessors as owners of 68 Marine Pde.
The building was developed in the 1980s by Brisbane dentist Nick Girdis, who has built three Main Beach high rises and also built Fisherman’s Wharf, the property that made way for Palazzo Versace.
John Longhurst, who built Dreamworld, bought 68 Marine for $5.6 million in 1989 and it became his operational base.
Eighteen years later Mr Longhurst sold the building to developer Bob Hill for $8.65 million but the new owner didn’t make a re-sale bob out of it.
He flicked the property, then known as the Bankwest Business Centre, at a $350,000 loss to Shafston International College founder Keith Lloyd in 2015.
Former boat-builder Mr Lloyd fared better than Mr Hill, staying for less than two years and booking a $2.2 million gain when he sold to Ms Quinn’s company CJQ Investments. She has been very low-profile as she makes her way in the business world.
Her only other major property purchase to surface has been the $10.9-million purchase of jeweller John Calleija’s Sanctuary Cove home in 2016.
That’s in contrast to the Aberdeen-born Mr Quinn who, with the petfoods and chocolate episodes of his life behind him, is cooking up big plans for a Casino beef-jerky business and charging into the UK jerky business.
He’s had his Gold Coast property chequebook out with buys such as a beachfront apartment, near $8 million riverfront Paradise Waters home, a Southport caryard and adjoining office block, and industrial property.
There’s no sign of him becoming a tenant in one of the two 68 Marine Pde floors that Ms Quinn has available and which are expected to lease at well north of $400 a square metre. No, Mr Quinn appears more than happy with his business base in Bundall’s Corporate Centre tower.