Gold Coast business: 65ha of Hope Island’s Serenity Cove land put up for sale
A giant waterfront section of a fast-growing northern Gold Coast development has hit the market, with buyers being sounded out.
Business
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THE partners in Hope Island waterfront estate Serenity Cove have a fresh and more open push under way to cash in their chips.
They want to sell the 65ha undeveloped portion of the lakefront estate, once touted to emerge as an exclusive eco-resort where purchase of the homes would be by invitation only.
Would-be buyers have been sounded out well ahead of agents launching an off-market campaign on behalf of Malaysian groups Sime Darby and Brunsfield International.
An almost secretive effort was made last year to find a buyer for their holding, which has frontages to Coombabah and Saltwater creeks and was originally part of the Oyster Cove estate.
It’s believed groups such as Stockland and Villa World ran a ruler over the land and at one point it appeared a big fish was on the line.
The hot tip was that the hot contender was Singaporean group Frasers Property, which bought listed group Australand in 2014 and was facing diminishing stock levels at its nearby Cova estate.
Suddenly everything went quiet and speculation flowed about the reason for a deal not progressing and whether it was just a case of negotiations breaking down.
Sime Darby and Brunsfield reportedly had been seeking at least $50 million for the land, approved for 235 lots and other residential product but with scope for much more.
They bought into the balance of Oyster Cove in 2006 and after the GFC and spent an estimated $25 million getting their land into shape, an exercise which included doubling the size of Lake Serenity.
The end goal was to create a $650 million masterplanned community with a 3800 sqm retail and dining precinct fronting the lake.
Land sales did not start until early in 2017.
The partners are believed to have sold 60 or so lots before inexplicably deciding to stop development and sell out.
Ahead of last year’s quiet attempt to find a buyer, they had the Serenity development approval, given in 2010, extended by the city council through to May 2020.
The Serenity foray was the first time Sime and Brunsfield, both rather large entities, had teamed up offshore.
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Their decision to make a premature exit hasn’t come as a complete surprise to some observers.
One observer says that after playing in Oyster’s backyard for 13 years, the Malaysian partners probably today view the undeveloped land as like an annoying pimple on an elephant’s backside in terms of the scale of their operations.
Oyster Cove was started by company Vanwell, associated with Singapore’s The Hour Glass watch group operator Jannie Tay, on land bought for $8.7 million in 1988.
The undeveloped portion was sold into a new entity involving Sime Darby, Brunsfield and Tay interests for $27 million in 2006.
The following year Sime Darby and Brunsfield took full control of the land but it was only in 2013 that earthworks on new estate Serenity Cove started.
The task of trying to find the partners a buyer, via a two-stage tender process, has been passed to Mark Witheriff and James Branch, of Knight Frank, with Colliers’ Brendan Hogan and James Holland also in the mix.
The big question is: Will Frasers be a contender?
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* A BUYER is believed to be in the wings for landmark Burleigh property the near 90-year-old Theatre Arcade.
Property sources have suggested a deal, if it happens, could be worth around $18 million and that the would-be buyer is resident Chinese and from ‘out of town’.
The arcade, which sits between the highway and Goodwin Tce and overlooks the beach, started life as the Deluxe Theatre and was converted to commercial and retail uses in the 1970s.
* BRUCE Tilley, a developer bankrupted after the GFC hit, has been casting an eye over a major residential site at the southern end of the Gold Coast.
News of his interest comes on the heels of the 67-year-old admitting he failed to disclose his bankruptcy when getting credit from American Express and escaping without a conviction.
Bruce sold his Millionaires’ Row home in Mermaid Beach in the wake of the GFC sinking the property company in which he was a partner.
* STEPHANIE Sheene, who has found a $7.05 million buyer for a riverfront mansion she and her late motorcycle champion husband Barry built, appears to have pre-empted the sale.
The former model bought a near 1000 sqm block facing Little Tallebudgera Creek for $1.41 million in March and settled the deal two weeks later.
Her motive for selling her English-style mansion, on 1.2ha at Carrara, was to downsize and it’s to be bowled by buyers Adrian and Jessica Puljich.
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