Revealed: The colourful business history of flamboyant Gold Coast nightclub veteran Tony Rigas
The collapse of a firm behind Pink Flamingo Spiegelclub is one of seven liquidations, and total debts above $11 million, of companies involving a Gold Coast nightclub veteran. Read the full story
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The collapse of the company behind The Pink Flamingo Spiegelclub is the latest in a string of seven liquidations – with combined debts above $11 million – of companies involving Gold Coast nightclub veteran Anthony Rigas.
Project 88 TPF, which operated The Pink Flamingo, was placed into voluntary liquidation on July 29 with debts of more than $3 million.
Project 88 is directed by Mr Rigas, 53, and Pink Flamingo co-founder Sue Porrett, with a registered place of business at the cabaret’s venue at 88 Surf Pde Broadbeach.
The club is now being operated by a new company directed by Mr Rigas’s partner Louise Huxham.
The company found itself in a flap last year when it was ordered to pay $30,000 to two former staff in an unfair dismissal case.
It’s all another colourful chapter in the life and times of Mr Rigas who has been no stranger to headlines since moving to the Gold Coast from Melbourne with his brother George in 1992.
The brothers launched long-running Orchid Ave establishment Shooters as a wild west-themed bar with Roberto Scartozzi, who also joined them in creating Mybar, underneath Shooters, and Quest.
As well as being a top gun at Shooters, Mr Rigas made a name for himself as a thrower of lavish birthday parties, including one at his Broadbeach Waters mansion in 2003.
According to the Bulletin’s social pages at the time, he named the soiree “A Night in The Playboy Mansion” and it hosted celebrities and corporate bigwigs who had flown in from around Australia for the Gold Coast Indy race.
His flamboyant long-time home at Ashmore, registered under Ms Huxham’s name, sold for $2.25m in 2021 after they’d listed it for $2.495 million in 2020.
The house at 76 Yangoora Crescent, Ashmore, which the couple bought for $822,000 in 2012, had been transformed with a nightclub aesthetic.
The businessman’s other ventures have included Opium, Vodka and Champagne Bar at Broadbeach, All Stars Sports Bar, The Monkey Cage, Delano Hotel, Love Nightlife, Club Boutique and The Oriental Whiskey Bar.
With Ms Huxham, he worked on the launch of East nightclub at Broadbeach in 2008. That location was transformed into The Pink Flamingo in 2018.
Shooters was the club to be seen at in the 1990s and early 2000s, drawing celebrities and sporting stars in their droves.
From 1992-96 it ran a weekly Hospitality Industry Party for Glitter Strip bar workers to wind down on a Monday. In 1999 – before smoking was banished from venues – it hosted a cigar-tasting night.
One State of Origin year, rugby league fans received private invitations to a Shooters “Miss Erotic State of Origin”, featuring “X-rated choreographed dance shows at halftime and sexy topless waitresses”.
Shooters underwent a major renovation in 2003, but new 3am lockout laws the following year saw Mr Rigas tell the Gold Coast Bulletin the club was losing $80,000 a week.
Despite an eventual return to more favourable trading hours, Shooters Saloon Bar Gold Coast was in strife with the tax office by the end of 2005, appointing administrators before a Federal Court wind-up action could be heard.
In a tense year for Mr Rigas, he was fined $2000 for punching rival nightclub owner David Avery in the mouth after a stoush over promo girls. Mr Rigas, then 34, pleaded guilty to assaulting Mr Avery, the manager of the neighbouring Search and Rescue Services Club.
Magistrate John Costanzo fined Mr Rigas $2000 and ordered him to pay $200 to Mr Avery, who was left with a cut lip from Mr Rigas’s blow.
Police prosecutor Sergeant Eric Engwirda said Mr Avery approached Mr Rigas outside Shooters because Mr Avery believed promotional women from Shooters were too close to his nightclub entrance.
Shooters Saloon Bar Gold Coast got off the mat in 2006, striking a deal with creditors to escape liquidation – but the reprieve was temporary when the directors were unable to finance it.
The company, directed by both Rigas brothers and Mr Scartozzi, was placed in the hands of Suncorp’s receivers and finally liquidators, who found almost $4 million in debt.
A subsidiary company, Shooters Bar, was also placed into receivership, on behalf of a mortgagor, in 2005 over an unknown debt.
That company – directed at the time by the Rigas brothers and Mr Scartozzi – was deregistered in 2007.
Mr Rigas finished 2006 as a bankrupt - a title he retained until he was discharged in April 2011.
Another company directed by Mr Rigas, My Operations, was placed into receivership in 2005 and was wound up by a court in went into liquidation in 2007.
Liquidator David Kerr found it owed $1.67 million.
But while the company fell to bits, the club itself didn’t skip a beat as it was sold to Bundall businessman George McMillan for an undisclosed amount.
The Shooters saga wasn’t over: three years later, a company named Shooters Saloon was wound up by a court, with liquidator Nick Combis finding it owed $1.21 million to unsecured creditors.
While the company’s former directors included the Rigas brothers and Mr Scartozzi, Stavros Pappas was sole director at the time it was wound up.
Mr Rigas remained a fixture at Shooters under its new ownership, helping out with its relaunch in 2013.
Shooters was replaced by the Asylum nightclub, run by Hallmark Group, in 2019.
Another company directed by Mr Rigas, 2 Tribes, went into voluntary liquidation in 2016, with the liquidator finding it owed more than $1.1 million.
The company’s former directors included Ms Huxham as well as East Nightclub co-owner James Tweddell and night-life identity Joey Lammatina, who ran Shuffle nightclub with Mr Rigas.
Another of Mr Rigas’s companies, Little Shop of Big Ideas, was placed also into liquidation in 2016.
Reports from the liquidator found that company, which provided interior design services for other venues including Melba’s and Billy’s Beach House, owed $19,655 to unsecured creditors.
Another company – directed by Mr Rigas for just one day in 2017 – was placed into liquidation in 2018. Reports from the liquidators found Moonshine Bros owed almost $23,000 in wages and superannuation as well as $205,234 in debts to unsecured creditors.
When it went into liquidation, Moonshine Bros was solely directed by Jo-Anne Crestani – also a director of companies that ran three Hope Island restaurants which collapsed under the weight of tax and superannuation debts the same year.
A report from Mr Rigas, lodged with the liquidator of the Pink Flamingo last week, said it owed money to employees, suppliers, government bodies, utilities, the ATO and others.
Among the creditors is the club’s security company, food and drink suppliers, a social photographer and cleaners.
The company was more than $157,000 behind in rent, owed more than $24,000 for alcohol and only had $4.84 in the bank when it went into liquidation.
After selling heavily discounted tickets last week, Pink Flamingo’s social media accounts were this week spruiking free ticket giveaways.
The show goes on.
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Originally published as Revealed: The colourful business history of flamboyant Gold Coast nightclub veteran Tony Rigas
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