Gold Empire’s Katie Fox behind Mackay’s adult store application

A Mackay tattooist who won a heritage award for her makeover on a historic CBD shopfront is making her mark on another site with plans for a new adult store. Find out where.

Tattoo artist Kate Foxley-Conolly

A Mackay tattoo artist is making her mark on yet another CBD building with plans for a new adult store.

Kate Foxley-Conolly first made waves when she restored the old Daily Mercury building in Wood St for her Gold Empire Tattoo Barber shop, earning her a Heritage Award from Mackay Regional Council in 2020.

Now the other end of the street is getting a makeover with Ms Foxley-Connolly, via KFX Co, recently buying 164 Wood St, the corner premise also fronting Shakespeare St, as well as next-door 162 Wood St which is the proposed location for Mackay’s fourth adult store.

Ms Foxley-Connolly, who also runs an adult entertainment business, has already transformed the building at 164 into the new home for the tattoo barber team and there is freshly painted black paint on the 162 Wood St premise.

In recent days, she signed permission for FX Clinics Rejuvenation, a Mackay-based company registered in late September, to make the development application for the adult store to Mackay Regional Council.

“(An adult store) means the use of premises for the primary purpose of displaying or selling sexually explicit materials or products and devices that are associated with, or used in, a sexual practice or activity,” documents lodged to council state.

They further state 162 Wood St, which is next door to the old fuel station, was built in 1927 as a dentist practice “and has been used for a range of commercial activities since then”.

Documents have been lodged to Mackay Regional Council to turn 162 Wood St into an adult store. Picture: Heidi Petith

They add the 158 sqm building satisfies the council’s planning scheme which recommends adult stores are at least 100m apart and not placed near schools, childcare centres, kindergartens, educational centres or places of worship.

The nearest adult store, The Diva’s Den at 146 Wood St, is 450m away and is closer than the proposed site to the Kutta Mulla Gorinna Special Assistance School across the road.

The application states 162 Wood St is “inconspicuous” with its interior “obscured” from the street, and rear parking is available via Sixth Lane.

Ms Foxley-Connolly paid $450,000 for the property in August last year, in the same month buying 164 Wood St, which itself used to be an adult store and before that Langford’s Newsagency, for $300,000.