Area 51: Children’s play centre to replace former GOAT and Options tavern at Westfield Helensvale
A former pub and bottle shop at one of the Gold Coast’s busiest shopping centres is to be transformed into an indoor children’s play centre. FIND OUT WHY
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A former pub and bottle shop at one of the Gold Coast’s busiest shopping centres is to be transformed into an indoor children’s play centre.
Area 51 will be built at Westfield Helensvale and will be the brand’s fourth centre in southeast Queensland
Operations manager Michael Affleck said the company saw the Gold Coast as a growth market ahead of its July opening.
“Helensvale will be a soft play facility aimed at people ages 12 and under and we are trying to break the mould of how soft play is done,” he said.
“We see the Gold Coast as a growth market and 10 per cent of our clientele at our Brisbane venues comes from it, so in our view the whole area is screaming out for cost-effective kids entertainment.
“It will be the perfect place.”
The Area 51 centre will replace a TAB, bottle shop and a former watering hole which for many years was operated as the Options Tavern.
In late 2022 it was redeveloped into the GOAT Sports Bar and Grill pub by prominent former All Black and Wallaby players Andrew Mehrtens and Nick Gregorski.
“There’s quite the rugby following around Helensvale, it’s quite a Kiwi community, so I thought to have an All Black working with me would absolutely fit really well,” Mr Gregorski said at the time.
However the venue later shut down, with a notice informing customers it had closed for refurbishment. It never reopened.
Mr Affleck said the new play centre would have room for up to 150 children at a time.
“Helensvale is expanding massively right now,” he said.
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