Sundale: 30 years since iconic Gold Coast shopping centre closed its doors after 21 years
Sundale was the Gold Coast’s first and most famous shopping centre and the heart of the community for decades. But it suddenly closed 30 years ago. This is the sad story of its last days.
History
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SUNDALE was the Gold Coast’s first shopping centre and at one time was the biggest in the entire state.
For more than 20 years it was the place to go in Southport and home to many popular shops and a major cinema.
Ask any long-time Gold Coaster and they can tell you stories about when they visited the famed complex and what they fondly recall about it.
But suddenly it all came to an end.
The year was 1990 and the Gold Coast was a city in flux.
The 1980s were finally over and the new millennium was on the horizon.
As the Japanese-led development boom brought tens of millions of dollars and new towers to the city, there was a sense of excitement about what the future would hold.
Sundale, which had opened in 1969, was celebrating its 21st birthday in early 1990 and had withstood the competition of Pacific Fair for more than a decade.
But there were clouds on its horizon as the nearby Scarborough Fair shopping centre began to rapidly expand through the late 1980s.
In late 1989 it was put up for sale by its owners, Haematite Pty Ltd and ICIANZ Pension Fund Securities in the hopes of securing up to $50 million.
It was exciting for shoppers but the sale of the complex, plus the new shopping centre proved to be the death-knell for Sundale as many of its key tenants moved out and relocated.
The cinema closed the same year, with films Dick Tracy, Back to the Future Part III and The Little Mermaid among the last the screen there.
By mid-1991 the complex was largely closed and abandoned, while its price had dropped to $35 million.
It fell even further to $30 million by August the same year and real estate agents were already talking up plans to redevelop it to become a tower or hotel.
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Among the handful of shops in the area which still operated was a fruit shop on the outskirts of the Centre.
In late 1992, around three years after tenants had begun to exit the centre Sundale was dismissed as “rundown” and a “white elephant”.
It was around this time that the former Big W area was cleared out and became home to Australia’s largest indoor go-kart racing centre.
Costing $150,000, it brought thousands of people back to Sundale.
Even at the time, it was been eulogised for is sad decline.
“The spectacular shopping spot of the Sixties, took just over two decades to hit the skids,” wrote journalist Terry Sweetman in 1992.
“Its eclipse was hastened by the shopper juggernaut, Pacific Fair, and Sundale’s nearby biggie, Australia Fair.”
In late 1993 Gold Coast mayor Lex Bell announced a $120 million Motorsport Theme Park would be built on the site.
But these plans stalled by mid-1994 and the complex was back on the market again by mid-1995 with a price of just $12 million.
In 1996 plans were launched to redevelop the site into a $150 million international trade centre, something which was expanded to a $250 million complex by 1998.
After these plans also collapsed, it was short-listed as the site of the future Gold Coast Convention Centre in 1999 but lost out to Broadbeach.
In 2001 the decision was made to demolish the decrepit centre, something which finally came to fruition in 2003, nearly 14 years after the first tenants began to leave.
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