Quentin Tod: New Bunnings store could open at Pimpama site owned by Tom Van Asperen

A developer who bought a $14m site at a prime Gold Coast location could be set to build a new Bunnings store there.

TOM Van Asperen, who’s made his mark building and developing property around the Gold Coast over many years, appears to have ‘nailed it’ at Pimpama.

The word around the area is that he’s secured Bunnings to open its doors on part of a large site that has a less than happy history.

Things are starting to look a lot happier under the ownership of Tom, who surprised many with the solid $14 million-plus he paid for the site five years ago.

Bunnings could be coming to Pimpama. Picture: Alison Wynd

If Bunnings has indeed committed to his land, he might be well on the road to justifying that price.

The national hardware chain is something of a blue-chip entity — if it’s a tenant the lease is long and there’s no worry about whether the rent is going to be paid.

The Van Asperen land fronts the M1 motorway, backs on to Yawalpah Rd, and offers enormous traffic exposure.

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Pimpama has been one of the fastest-growing development locations in Australia for nearly a decade and in 2017 was named the nation’s number one housing hotspot.

Josie and Tom van Asperen in 2004. PicMichael/Ross

Hence it’s an obvious location for a Bunnings ‘shed’ — the group’s closest properties are at Upper Coomera and Ormeau.

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It is understood to have eyed at least one other Pimpama site before showing a preference for the Van Asperen land.

The Wesfarmers-owned chain has stepped up its Queensland ambitions in the wake of the demise of the Woolworths-linked Masters chain.

It’s in the first year of a five-year plan to spend in excess of $600 million building 15 new warehouses in the state and expanding existing ones.

The Van Asperen holding spans 25ha and has been owned, via company Baycrown, since 2014.

The land was bought from receivers for $14.18 million at a time when Pimpama was being targeted by a raft of developers and home-building groups.

Bunnings was heard to be looking at sites in the area.

Players such as billionaire Bob Ell, veteran developer Norm Rix, and listed group AV Jennings are believed to have chased the site.

Tom appears to have left them in the dust with his offer — he paid double what one of the contenders judged the land to be worth.

The receivers who sold the property were believed to be acting for mortgagee ING.

The land had been owned by Trimglint and Quinnco, companies associated respectively with valuer Rob Boyland and former lawyer John Quinn.

They gained the nod in 2009 for a 13-lot subdivision apparently intended for retail-showroom development.

The Van Asperen plans might also include townhouse and small-home sites.

Tom’s property plays over the past 20 or so years have taken in Tweed Heads, diverse areas of the Gold Coast, parts of Brisbane, and even further north.

He’s managed to largely stay under the radar, one notable exception being a 2005 legal wrangle involving his Baycrown entity and which went all the way to the High Court.

Baycrown was ordered to honour a contract under which it had agreed to sell the Coachwood Park estate at Coomera to a company with board links to the family of former Queensland Premier, the late Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

THE Chinese-owned company that owns the Arundel Hills golf course has survived an attempt to put it permanently out of bounds over an overdue drinks bill.

Australian Liquor Marketers went to the Supreme Court seeking the winding up of Zhongsheng Management over a $21,533 debt incurred over a two-month period.

The debt’s apparently been paid and Zhongsheng, which bought Arundel Hills for $13.5 million in late 2015, is out of court and not out of bounds.

A BUYER has a contract on the beachfront Surfers Paradise apartment that for more than 20 years was the home of Paradise Centre developer the late Eddie Kornhauser.

The 500 sqm Allunga tower apartment was put on the market eight months ago, with the owner chasing $2 million plus.

Eddie died in 2006 and his family’s still sitting on two of his Gold Coast investments — The Pines shopping centre at Elanora and the 407ha Greenmeadows broadacre holding at Pimpama.

THE looming arrival in town of 40-year-old property advisory group Charter Keck Cramer is good news for Steve Gillard and his listed GDI group.

The newcomer apparently has chosen the Fifty Cavill Avenue office tower in Surfers Paradise for its base.

The lease nudges the Gold Coast’s major office tower close to being 100 per cent full and must help GDI’s efforts to sell the property, which valuers rate as worth $100 million.