Gold Coast property: Owner of Park Lane site in Southport next to ASF holding fires up another campaign to sell property

This Southport house – with Broadwater views and overlooking the Southport Bowls Club – could have been part of the site for a mega casino. Instead it is back on the market with possibly reduced price expectations.

LOOSELY, it could be called the little house on the little prairie – a Southport residence sitting in a ‘paddock’ and surrounded by green.

Neighbours to the Park Lane home are a grassed vacant tower site, bowling greens and tennis courts.

If a vision of mayor Tom Tate had become reality, the property could have become part of a 6.7ha site for a mega casino.

Now the owner of the three-bedroom house is rolling the dice and hoping a developer will take it off his hands.

An artist impression of ASF Consortium's Gold Tower, The AU over looking the Southport Bowls Club.

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The lure – it’s approved for a 25-level building with 66 apartments that would look across bowling greens and parkland to the Broadwater.

Brisbane resident Xingzhe Chen bought the home in early 2016, becoming only the second owner of the property in more than 30 years.

He might well have been drawn by what was brewing on the adjacent land to the west and north, fronting Park Lane and Scarborough St.

The ASF consortium, which had been rebuffed in its plans for a resort and casino on Wavebreak Island, owned the vacant 4776sq m.

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It was in the throes of shaping a development application for a golden super-tower.

Xingzhe, via his company Guanghe Group, bought the ‘little house’, on a 655sq m site, for $1.5 million.

He proceeded to prepare his own development application and, in early 2018, gained approval for a BDA-designed apartment tower.

A year ago he put the property on the market, seeking to achieve $5.5 million and a juicy ‘earn’.

He perhaps was hoping that ASF might step forward and add the land to its site but it appears the company didn’t bite.

A view of 1 Park Lane from the Southport Bowls Club.

Now Xingzhe is trying again, perhaps with moderated price expectations.

It’s highly debatable whether ASF will step forward with an offer – the listed group’s showing no sign of firing up development on its holding, let alone increasing its size.

That holding might well be called the promised land — it’s been through three decades of mooted projects that never have happened.

James Kirkpatrick, a Kiwi investor who built Southport’s The Brickworks, bought a major portion of the site in 1988 but a later-flagged residential-commercial project involving multiple buildings did not eventuate.

Nor did a Gold Coast couple’s plans to put a 15-level ‘education tower’ on part of the land.

Accountant and developer Graeme Ingles snared much of the ex-Kirkpatrick land early in the new millennium, won the nod for a 45-level tower called Iridium, then saw his ‘empire’ crash and burn during the GFC.

An aerial view of the Southport site owned by ASF.

ASF rocked up and did business with receivers in 2011, added an adjoining property in Park Lane and, all up, invested $5.54 million.

The land’s value no doubt has swollen since then, firstly by it being included in the Southport Priority Development Area in 2014 and then by approval for the super-tower.

Whether ASF ever tried to buy 1 Park Lane is not known but if it did, the experience might have mirrored that of James Kirkpatrick.

He apparently was rebuffed multiple times by the long-term owner.

It remains to be seen how long the house stays on the ‘prairie’ should Xingzhe’s roll of the dice come up trumps.