Gold Coast development: The 1999 plan for Gold Coast theme park Wedding World

A Gold Coast site earmarked for a world-first theme park centred entirely on weddings. That was one of several bold ideals unveiled.

A GOLD Coast site has been earmarked for a world-first theme park centred entirely on weddings.

That was the news which greeted locals 20 years ago this week as Japanese developers looked to put the late 1990s financial crisis behind them.

The Gold Coast has seen plenty of new theme park proposals come and go in the near 30 years since Magic Mountain closed for the final time and Warner Bros Movie World opened.

A wedding theme park?

From the 1998 plan to bring Disneyland to the Gold Coast to a proposed $50 million dinosaur theme park, there has been no shortage of ideas.

Even now the Gold Coast City Council is preparing to consider the $600 million Aussie Legends theme park at Carrara proposed by developer Songcheng.

But in April 1999 Japan’s largest overseas wedding promotion company unveiled its own idea.

Watabe Wedding Corporation revealed Wedding World, a $27 million theme park earmarked for a 115ha site at Merrimac.

The Avica Resort.

The plans shown to media included chapels, reception areas, scenic locations for photoshoots and a studio.

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It was hoped the park would be used not just by locals but by overseas visitors coming to the city to get married.

Yoshihisa Takeuchi, Watabe’s Gold Coast branch manager, said the company wanted to create a “one-stop shop” over a 10-year period.

“It will be just like a romantic park. A place where couples can relax on their own without other people around, Mr Takeuchi said through an interpreter.

“It will be a quiet, peaceful place.”

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Some of Avica’s facilities.

The development was ultimately built as the Avica complex in Merrimac which billionaire Clive Palmer bought in 2010.

In 2015 Mr Palmer filed a development application to build a giant mini-city with towers of up to 30-storeys.

Now four years later the project is yet to materialise.

The announcement of the wedding theme park came at a time when there were several major projects announced or under way which were set to change the face of the Gold Coast heading into the 21st century.

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Clive Palmer’s development proposed for Merrimac.

Chief among them was Sunland’s Palazzo Versace which was under construction on the former Fisherman’s Wharf site.

Sunland, which was still six years away from realising its most famous creation – the Q1 – had planned to take the Versace project worldwide with a series of hotels.

Meanwhile, Hollywood director Steven Spielberg was eyeing off the city as the location of a proposed restaurant,

Dive! Was to be a yellow submarine-theme dining venue at the Paradise Centre overlooking the beachfront.

Desmond Brooks. Picture by Luke Marsden.

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But the project was left homeless after the Paradise Centre’s owners decided against supporting the eatery.

It ultimately wasn’t built.

The rise and fall of these projects at the end of the 1990s led to famed architect Desmond Brooks to declare that the Gold Coast had become “complacent”.

He said the Gold Coast had “wallowed in a notion of mediocrity” since the 1980s.

“I think the Asian downturn pushed home the fact we haven’t really kept our eye on the ball,” he said.

“Victoria is doing a fabulous job. Every week, there’s something on and that’s what this game is all about. You’ve got to keep having things for people to do and openings and announcements.”