Gold Coast rocket tech company founder sells Strawberry Farm space centre site as Pimpama takes off
Earmarked for a multimillion-dollar space museum, astronaut training and rocket manufacture facility, the Gold Coast’s famous old Strawberry Farm has changed hands and is set for a more down-to-earth development.
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THE old Strawberry Farm — once the Gold Coast’s most famous driving holiday pit stop — has been dormant for years and its empty fields waiting for takeoff.
But the future for the Pimpama property beside the Pacific Motorway looks set to be much more down to earth than expected.
The local tourism institution closed its shed doors after more than 35 years in early 2014 when the site was sold to Helensvale-based Gilmour Space Technologies.
Property records show the rising rocket tech company paid $1.45 million for the 1.15ha site at 1 Pimpama-Jacobs Well Rd.
The entrepreneurial firm had earmarked the holding for an out-of-this-world, multimillion-dollar space museum, astronaut training and rocket manufacture facility.
But this week, the property changed hands again with the settlement of a $3.2 million cash unconditional deal to a private Gold Coast-based family.
According to Re/Max Commercial’s Deepen Khagram, who acted as the buyer’s agent in the transaction, the site is now destined for a more earthly endeavour to capitalise on the growth in the Brisbane-Gold Coast corridor.
“This particular private family is looking at various development options, including the possibility of a storage facility,” Mr Khagram said.
“The site is strategically located to the massive growth that is happening in Pimpama and they saw it as a prime large land holding with M1 exposure in an area that has really taken off.”
He said he negotiated with Gilmour Space Technologies founder and chief executive officer Adam Gilmour and the deal was sealed within one day.
“He didn’t have any further use for that block of land and didn’t want to redevelop it himself, so he decided to sell and deploy the capital elsewhere,” Mr Khagram said.
The venture capital-backed private company was founded in 2012 with an aim to design and build a low-cost space launch vehicle.
It successfully launched Australia’s first privately developed hybrid rocket in 2016.
Later the same year, it opened its space academy with a “soft launch” in a building near the old Strawberry Farm site.
In a blog entry on March 15, 2017, Mr Gilmour said: “In view of key milestones ahead, I have decided to put Spaceflight Academy operations temporarily on hold as we focus on getting our rockets to space.
“Rest assured, however, that Gilmour Spaceflight Academy will be back in the first quarter of 2018 with exciting new simulators and a more focused strategy of delivering space and STEM education to the next generation of astronauts”.
But a further update on the academy’s website home page declares: “Gilmour Spaceflight Academy is closed until further notice.
“Our team has been given a critical mission to build and launch a rocket this year and regretfully will be unable to reopen Spaceflight Academy in Q1 2018, as planned. We hope to be able to share more news on reopening later this year.”
Earlier this year, Gilmour Space Corporation’s plans to launch a satellite into space suffered a setback with a technical failure nine seconds before the test launch of its One Vision suborbital rocket from a site in the state’s west.
It is now looking to launch an “enhanced version” of the rocket “in the near future”.
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