Queen Street Village: Huge $10.5m sale at troubled $500m Southport shopping centre

A pair of billionaires have pumped $10.5m into buying part of a troubled $500m shopping centre site but mystery surrounds what they will do with it.

BILLIONAIRES Eddie Hirsch and Ari Silver have pumped $10.5m into buying the largest undeveloped portion of the troubled Queen Street Village site at Southport.

The men behind the United Petroleum chain of service stations have bought the land from a mortgagee via companies Hirsch South and Silver South.

The holding is in three titles, spans 5401sq m, and has frontages to Nerang and Queen streets at the western end of the former Gold Coast Hospital site.

Colliers Gold Coast director Steven King said the buyers had not indicated what plans they had for the land.

The vacant Queen Street Village sites fronting Queen and Nerang streets

A property source said he believed the Hirsch-Silver camp saw the holding as “great buying” but had no short-term plans for it.

The Queen Street Village project was being undertaken by company Nerang Street, associated with David Blanck’s Brisbane-based Property Solutions group.

Administrators were called in late last year, with Nerang Street believed to be owing around $80m. It blamed its woes on financial issues and a change in property market valuations.

Builder Hutchinsons was a secured creditor to the tune of $22m and in April sold Mr Blanck’s Brisbane riverfront home at Teneriffe for $6.55m.

Colliers Gold Coast director Steven King.

It also is secured creditor on a volumetric title apartment tower site above Queen Street Village.

That site is under contract in a deal that is yet to settle, as is a mortgagee-controlled property on the corner of Queen and Little High streets.

Hirsch and Silver companies have been targeting the Gold Coast for several years and their United Petroleum business owns or operates nine fuel outlets across the city.

A Hirsch entity is a partner in development company Hirsch and Faigen which has sold out tower projects at Kirra and Palm Beach and is closing in on a similar result at Mermaid Beach.

Meanwhile, Mr Silver’s activities have included spending $7.25m on a 11ha site beside the M1 motorway at Upper Coomera and $8m on a 26.4ha site in Days Rd, Upper Coomera.

He owns a beachfront home in Mermaid Beach, bought in 2011 for $7.7m – a $10m discount to the previous sale.

Originally published as Queen Street Village: Huge $10.5m sale at troubled $500m Southport shopping centre