Surfers Paradise Bowls club site for sale on Gold Coast after Mayor Tom Tate and investors put on market

Mayor Tom Tate and fellow investors have put their controversial Surfers Paradise Bowls Club site, at one point approved for 56-level tower Waterglow, on the market.

MAYOR Tom Tate and fellow investors have put their controversial Surfers Paradise Bowls Club site, at one point approved for 56-level tower Waterglow, on the market.

The Peninsular Drive site has no price, with potential buyers asked to step forward.

The site last year became enmeshed in a Crime and Corruption Commission probe. It culminated in the CCC in April saying it had not found any corrupt conduct by Cr Tate in relation to the site and any benefit its owners might have received from the sale of the council’s adjacent Bruce Bishop carpark.

Surfers Paradise Bowls Club site on Peninsular Drive, Gold Coast

The 4999 sqm Waterglow holding is near the corner of Peninsular Drive and Remembrance Tce and includes four former bowling greens.

It is owned by companies associated with Mr Tate, former hotel operator Kelvin Gersbach, and accountant Barry Pinkstone.

Cr Tate flagged in mid-2016 he would sell his stake.

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The sell-off move came to fruition yesterday when Roland Evans, of Canford Estates Agents, said his agency had been engaged to sell the site via an expressions of interest campaign.

Mr Tate would not comment but Mr Evans said the ownership partnership was being dissolved.

The proposed Waterglow tower’s approval lapsed.

“The partners each have other things they want to do,” Mr Evans said.

Surfers Paradise Bowls Club, the city’s second oldest, closed nine years ago and its greens, which sit above a carpark, were abandoned.

Tate-Gersbach company Crestden bought the bowls club headquarters, on the first floor of Surfers Paradise Plaza apartment building, for $1.43 million in 2007 and opened the Gold Coast Commerce Club Inc.

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The greens later were bought by the partners for $770,000 when the bowls club faced a $1 million debt.

The two holdings, the headquarters and greens were transferred, in 2009 and 2016, to the companies proposing Waterglow for a total of $190,000 in deals involving the forgiving of debt.

Surfers Paradise Bowls Club site on Peninsular Drive, Gold Coast

The Waterglow tower was approved in 2013, an approval that took in sites owned by State Government and city council that the project’s partners did not own.

The government’s 811 sqm Peninsular Drive holding, which took in part of the ground-level carpark at the bowls club, was secured for $2.05 million in 2016.

The Waterglow partners were contenders when the city council put its 1833 sqm holding to tender but the outcome of the tender process never has been disclosed.

The Waterglow approval was for a tower with ground-floor retail space, a “vertical” motel on the six lowest floors, and 389 apartments.

Four basement levels were to provide 658 carparks, including 150 for the 147 Surfers Plaza Resort owners.

Mr Evans said the approval lapsed after the council declined to extend it.

He said the site’s centre zoning allowed a mixed-use project that could include a hotel, apartments, and retail or commercial space.

“A new owner might also want to negotiate with the council to add its parcel to the site.”

Mr Evans said any plans the buyer of the Bruce Bishop carpark implemented could have a positive effect on development of the Waterglow site.

“The area could well become an important precinct in that area of Surfers Paradise.

“Any tower on the bowls club site would have great views straight down the Nerang River and also out to the ocean.”