Shacks make way for high-end living
A PAIR of 1950s-era buildings on the Currumbin foreshore will be demolished to make way for a high-end unit block.
The properties, on what has been dubbed “mini-millionaire’s row”, were bought for $5.56m in December.
Sydney-based buyer Marquee Flora wants to transform the consolidated Pacific Parade site into an ultra-modern fourstorey, seven-unit building with million-dollar views.
“The expressive architectural language of the development delivers a built form that will enhance its setting, adopt a design that is both sympathetic and complementary to the variety of
the established character of the Pacific Parade Neighbourhood,” the planning report says.
The land had been owned by Brisbane’s McCurran family for more than 63 years.
Its sale in December 2020 was a record for beachfront property on Pacific Parade, with the new owner paying nearly $7100 per square metre.
Each of the two 392sq m sites had a June 2020 rateable value of $2.4m.
Just metres from Elephant Rock and the famed surf break of Currumbin Alley, beachfront properties on Pacific Parade rarely go on the market, making them a hot commodity for buyers in the past decade.
In late 2018, a 1960s-era apartment four-unit block on
the same street was snapped up for $2.7m, an increase on its 2015 sale price of $2.3m.
But the area’s peak community group says it is concerned about the “anything goes” approach to development.
Friends of Currumbin president Barry Robinson said he did not want to see his suburb become “another Surfers Paradise or Palm Beach”.
“I am a bit disappointed (about the new development) but that’s the way it goes,” he said.
“Council seems to just let anything go these days, especially if you look at Palm Beach.
“We must not let Currumbin become another Surfers Paradise or Palm Beach.”