3Group has lodged plans with the Gold Coast City Council for its $150m Arundel Estate masterplan
A developer behind grand plans to redevelop a famed golf course has urged city leaders to give the green light to his project, claiming it will help ease the Gold Coast’s housing crisis.
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The developer behind grand plans to redevelop the Arundel Hills Country Club has urged city leaders to give the green light to his project, claiming it will help ease the Gold Coast’s housing crisis.
3Group has lodged plans with the Gold Coast City Council for its $150m Arundel Estate masterplan for the 67ha former golf club, which will create more than 380 houses and become home to more than 1200 people.
Company CEO Steven Kleytman said the project was a “no-brainer” amid fears the city will run out of developable greenfield land within a handful of years.
NEXT STEPS FOR PROPOSED $150M REDEVELOPMENT
“Currently, this site has 67ha of privately owned flood-free land that is locked away from the public, but which can readily provide housing for the central Gold Coast,” he said.
“It’s a travesty that this land, which is no longer viable as a golf course, should continue to lay dormant while the city is bursting at the seams amid the worst housing shortage in living memory.
“Under the proposal put forward by Arundel Estates, just 27 per cent of this site will be used to deliver an additional 380 lots for detached dwellings to accommodate up to 1200 residents. The remainder will be for public use, with the majority of the site planned as an environmental reserve that also will extend the city’s koala mapping area.”
The developer lodged is masterplan with the council in early 2024 and will unveil its detailed project plans once it is approved.
It is expected to go before the council’s planning committee before Christmas.
Zhongsheng Management, the company which previously owned and operated the golf club, was placed in external administration in May 2022.
The club has been left deserted and the facilities in disrepair with the site eventually sold to Mr Kleytman and his business partners.
However some residents and political leaders have opposed the proposal, arguing it was inappropriate and too large for the site.
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Mr Kleytman said his project would not be an overdevelopment of the site.
“When the golf course was developed decades ago, it removed large areas of koala habitat and disrupted potential movement corridors from state significant habitat adjoining Arundel Hills to the north,” he said.
“The proposal by Arundel Estates will effectively deliver much of this site back to the environment while delivering housing across a small portion of the site. The remaining 73 per cent will become public land and land gifted to A.B. Paterson College, for use as sporting fields which represents a “net gain” for the community.
“This site is no longer viable as a golf course and it is too valuable to the community to lay dormant. Ultimately, our proposal for the site will create more than 40ha of public open space that will largely be devoted to environmental uses at no cost to taxpayers,” he said.
“The housing component will proceed without any material impact on native habitat by taking advantage of the existing landscape which includes corridors of eucalyptus trees alongside the fairways and the water bodies scattered throughout the site.”
Mr Klytman’s plea comes just weeks after the release of the 2023 Gold Coast Dwelling Supply Study which warned the state government’s updated dwelling supply estimates for the Gold Coast are “questionable”, with existing greenfield sites able to viably deliver 17,564 houses.
This is less than a third of the state’s target of 57,194.
The report, which analyses the state of the city’s development sector, warns the existing Southeast Queensland Regional Plan urban footprint should be dumped – a move which would allow developable land such as Norwell Valley in the northern Gold Coast to be unlocked for housing.
Michael Matusik, one of the study’s authors, warned a large number of the houses proposed for the Gold Coast are unlikely to ever get built for economic reasons and other solutions will be needed to ensure housing catches up with the population growth.
“Just look at the stock which has been approved across the Gold Coast over the past decade and see a lot of attached dwellings – apartments – have not yet started,” he said.
“That is something like 37,000 pieces of stock which were approved and not started.
“That’s 10 to 12 years supply but they haven’t started, they cannot start because it is too expensive to build or for the market to purchase.”
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