Bowlo to backpackers
Surfers greens to turn into a capsule hostel
THE former home of one of the Gold Coast’s best-loved bowls clubs will be redeveloped into an unexpected new tourism facility.
The Surfers Paradise Bowls Club and Commerce Club site, which closed under controversial circumstances more than a decade ago, will be turned into a “capsule pod” backpacker’s hostel.
According to plans lodged with the Gold Coast City Council this week by Guatemalan-born businessman Alfonso Abril, it will have 292 pods, which will have a private bunk bed-style inside the podium of the Surfers Plaza Resort tower.
It will also feature a common area, kitchen, bathrooms and a media room.
The 38-year-old Mr Abril, who opened his first hostel in Guatemala City, operates through company Tequila Sunrise Coliving.
Eight years ago he launched a Tequila Sunrise hostel in the heart of Adelaide’s CBD.
Mr Abril opened a 100-bed hostel in the former Shark’s Fin restaurant space in Surfers Paradise Boulevard two years ago.
He yesterday said that hostel had been impacted by Covid but had “fired” since Easter.
“I see Surfers Paradise as a beautiful place with lots of potential,” he said.
The bowls club and Gold Coast Commerce Club closed their doors suddenly in March 2010 in the middle of a bowls tournament for renovations and never reopened.
Both clubs had been struggling financially for several years.
The proposed hostel is the latest capsule-style hotel pitched for the backpacker market in the past six months in anticipation of a significant influx of overseas tourists and backpackers returning to the city postCovid.
In April, the Bulletin revealed a Melbourne-based developer had plans to build a Japanese-style capsule hotel on the Gold Coast where it would cost just $20 a night to stay.
IGR Property Group has filed plans with the Gold
Coast City Council for Capsuleaccom.com, a 173-bed Japanese-style dormitory accommodation centre in Swan House on Southport’s Nerang St, which would offer the city’s cheapest accommodation.
Gold Coasters welcomed the concept, both as a way of bringing backpackers back to the city but as a solution to homelessness.
Tourism leaders have thrown their weight behind the new accommodation facilities as a way of attracting visitors of all means to the city.
The Surfers Plaza proposal will go before council’s planning committee next year.
The backpacker’s accommodation is unrelated to plans to redevelop the former bowls club greens, with twin towers tipped to be build on the land.
The council is selling the site, despite the objections of residents.
Mayor Tom Tate was not involved in the decision because he is a member of a consortium which owns a neighbouring site and gained approval nine years ago for a 56-storey tower.
However, the consortium is also selling its land.