Meadowbrook Golf Club threatens to fight Logan council at ballot box over lease changes

A golf club which wants to install pokie machines but has faced difficulties with a local council over its plan says it will take its fight to the ballot box. CHECK OUT THE TIMELINE

A southside golf club, which faced 10 years of chaos while a local council ripped up its fairways for sewers, now says the council is thwarting its plans for pokies.

Meadowbrook Country Golf Club applied to Logan City Council last year to install 50 gaming machines to bolster its revenue after the decade of business turmoil.

Logan City Council took eight months to approve the pokie application, which the club said was granted in August but came with unreasonable conditions.

One of the conditions the council stipulated was that the corporation that leases the golf club land from the council, Australian Golf Management Corporation, had to re-sign its lease contract with council.

AGMC signed a 90-year lease for the Meadowbrook land with the council in 1987.

Meadowbrook Golf director Tom Linskey said there was no need to alter the main lease for the golf site and all the council was asked to do was to approve a new sublease and liquor licence.

Meadowbrook Golf director Tom Linskey.

“Previous subleases and changes have been approved in a matter of days and the council never had a solicitor involved but this has taken nearly a year and it’s still not resolved,” Mr Linskey said.

“Eventually, the council approved our sublease to the Meadowbrook Country Golf Club in August after we spent thousands of dollars in legal fees.

“And then the council told us a condition of approving the sublease was that we must change our main head lease for the entire site, which will mean the way our rent to the council is calculated will change.

“This is changing a lease that has been in existence since July 1, 1987 and is a lease which also states that one of the allowed purposes is gaming.

“The hypocrisy is that any request for permission to sublease in the past has been treated on its merits and then granted with the only provision that it operates in accordance with the head lease — so why not with this one.

“We are powerless to attack the council bureaucrats so we will be forced to fight this at the ballot box,” Mr Linskey said.

The Meadowbrook Country Golf Club is near Griffith University.

Logan City Council did not answer questions about why it took so long to grant the sublease or why it wanted to alter the terms of the overall lease.

There have been four previous subleases for parts of the golf course facility since the original master lease was first signed with the council to use the site as a golf course in 1987.

The first sublease was in 1994 after poker machines were legalised in Queensland and the club wanted to install some machines.

In 1996, Australian Golf Management Corporation sublet the operation of the golf course to GPT Pty Ltd.

In 2001, GPT exited and a new sublease was granted to Sponjorno Pty Ltd, which operated the facility until it left in 2017 following the course closure while the council was building the sewer line.

The current sublease is with Meadowbrook Golf Pty Ltd which operates the clubhouse and restaurant and which Mr Linskey is director.

Logan council approved that sublease within four weeks.