Premier Palaszczuk’s Main Beach buy, Wayne McCrae spends dough on bakery, Southport Golf Club leadership stoush and more Gold Coast business gossip
The Premier has expanded her Gold Coast property portfolio, a former mining executive has diversified into food production, the leadership race for a top Coast golf club is getting interesting and more of the week’s Gold Coast business snippets
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AS it emerged Deputy Premier Jackie Trad would not face a corruption probe into her controversial Brisbane investment house, it came to our attention her commander in chief had been dabbling in a bit of property buying of her own.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has bought a Gold Coast holiday retreat, an apartment in Main Beach’s Liberty Pacific tower.
She paid $705,000 for the one-bedroom apartment, which nine months previously had traded at $630,000. The apartment, which settled in July and has been recorded on Ms Palaszczuk’s parliamentary register of interests, is on the eighth floor and has a long balcony facing north and with views across the Main Beach Tourist Park to the ocean.
Liberty Pacific and the adjoining Liberty Panorama tower were completed 20 years ago by the listed Mirvac group on a complete block previously Japanese-owned.
The towers are rated among the best in the beachfront suburb and have drawn some big-name buyers.
The owners of the Liberty Pacific penthouse have included management-rights industry veteran Frank Picone and the former CEO at the James Packer-linked Crown Resorts, Rowen Craigie.
The huge apartment atop Liberty Panorama is owned by major Melbourne builder and racing identity Peter Devitt who set a Gold Coast record when he bought it for $9.2 million in 2012.
The Premier owns a four-bedroom house at Seventeen Mile Rocks in Brisbane, paying $260,000 for it 14 years ago.
In 2012 Ms Palaszczuk bought a two-bedroom unit at Rainbow Beach on the Sunshine Coast.
Her Main Beach buy was handled by Liberty specialists Sharon and Matthew Lloyd, of Livin In Prestige Properties.
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WAYNE McCrae, veteran of the mining industry, has bought a slice of Main Beach’s Tedder Ave that includes the building housing the beachside suburb’s landmark bakery.
The 71-year-old Mr McCrae yesterday said that he also had bought the Main Beach Bakery business that was leasing the building.
“No, I haven’t put on the baker’s hat but I’ve kept the same efficient and hardworking staff, so nothing’s changed.”
The McCrae family holding takes in the five titles spanning 506 sqm that make up 24 Tedder Ave, on the western corner of Peak Ave.
The amalgamation is the culmination of an exercise that started in 1995.
Mr McCrae said ownership of the site gave him a potential redevelopment holding but he would do nothing for at least three to five years.
“Even then I’ll have to see what’s allowed — I’m not into high rises.
“I’d build something that blends in with the Main Beach character that was established decades ago.
“I’m not a fan of glass and shine.”
Mr McCrae said the first of the five titles, one today occupied by the Hard Coffee cafe, was bought 24 years.
An adjoining title, at one point occupied by wife Cheryl’s Cheran shoe boutique and today empty, was added two years later.
The purchase of the bakery title, for $1 million, already has settled.
Mr McCrae said two other titles fronting Peak Ave were under contract in deals that would settle before Christmas.
A near neighbouring owner is a company associated with a nephew of Aussie Home Loans founder John Symonds which paid $5.5 million for seven titles in Main Beach Plaza.
Minerals explorer Mr McCrae has operated at least three mining businesses from the Gold Coast over the past 40 years, including Diversified Mineral Resources and Australian Mining Investments.
He founded copper hopeful Cudeco, which he left in 2015 with Chinese investors in control and which since has failed.
Mr McCrae, who spent several years working in Tanzania, became a consultant to Ausmex Mining in 2017, a company in which he was a major shareholder.
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A LEGAL eagle and dentist will take a swing at the top job of the Southport Golf Club next month in the wake of internal ructions that had members of the elite course teed off.
Incumbent Michael Kyle, the owner of Southport-based ABKJ Lawyers, will face off against Broadbeach dentist Dr Brian O’Hara at the club’s AGM in late October. There’s certainly no questioning Dr O’Hara’s loyalty to the club.
When BB phoned to ascertain his confidence leading up to the election, we were told that “Friday is his golf day” and he wouldn’t be back in the office until Monday.
The club was thrown into turmoil earlier this year when former director Adrian Rowney resigned after raising a series of issues about the employment of former general manager Nik Robinson.
Mr Rowney said he would like to see Dr O’Hara, with the other members on his ticket including treasurer candidate Andrea Frost, elected to the board calling him “a breath of fresh air”.
“Michael Kyle has been on the board for eight years and the club needs a change,” he told BB.
Mr Kyle played down the importance of the election, stating the upcoming vote was business as usual.
“If members think we are doing a good job they will elect us and if not they won’t,” he said.
He said he did not know Dr O’Hara and that his pitch to members was about “quality management”.
“We will keep doing what we have been doing since I became president,” he said.
“I do not know Brian. It is up to the members to decide who they are willing to elect as president.”
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GOLD Coast Innovation Hub chair Danny Maher has denied the purchase of a reading program from embattled Hillcrest Christian College has fallen through.
The I Love Reading (ILR) company, which was set up by Hillcrest to commercialise a reading program, has attracted controversy and criticism from some parents due to $600,000 in loans from the college.
The school was to make a profit from the sale to Hong Kong company New Wave Capital and 42 Ventures, the investment arm of the Hub, for $1 million.
But, the deal has been stuck in due diligence and there are rumblings that it may not settle.
However, Mr Maher told BB it very much remains a live deal.
“It is still under due diligence. We’re just looking at the structure of how we want to do it,” he said.
Mr Maher is a fan of the program calling it “bloody amazing”.
“The program has discovered how language works, the phonetic code to any language,” he said.
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