Gold Coast Irish pub D’Arcy Arms put on market as potential tower site by owner Mick Power

The Gold Coast’s oldest Irish pub and its adjoining property have been listed as a potential tower site by its construction industry heavyweight owner.

MICK Power, construction industry heavyweight and occasional barman, is heading for the door at his landmark D’Arcy Arms Irish pub in Surfers Paradise.

Mr Power has put the D’Arcy and an adjoining property, being used as a carpark, on the market as a potential tower site.

The holding, which has no height limit, fronts the Gold Coast Highway and Aubrey St and spans 3154 sqm.

The move to sell it comes on the back of a Power sell-off, for $30 million, of a nearby beachfront site and with efforts underway to sell a neighbouring eight-level building.

Mr Power, 71, this week said he had considered developing the D’Arcy holding himself or with a partner but had shelved the idea.

D'Arcy Arms holding, Surfers Paradise.

The founder of the BDM group, who bought the D’Arcy Arms in 2004, said he would be leaving behind happy memories.

He said that ‘off and on’ he served behind the bar but got into trouble with the manager for giving too many free beers.

“I got behind the bar one night but was still there past the legal trading hour of midnight and the manager, the late singer Patrick O’Hagan’s daughter Fiona, threatened to throw me out.”

Mr Power also said he had some rollicking vocal Friday nights at the D’Arcy with his renditions of Irish favourites Danny Boy and Galway Bay.

The D’Arcy, which includes a motel, has become a Gold Coast institution since it was opened by Roy D’Arcy in August, 1988.

It became, in the same year, the first pub in Australia to have Guinness on tap, beer drawn from the first Guinness keg brewed in Queensland.

The D’Arcy package is being marketed by Mark Witheriff and Daniel Doran, of CBRE Gold Coast, and Paul Fraser, of CBRE Hotels, via an expressions of interest campaign that closes on October 6.

The 30 Aubrey Street site beside the D'Arcy Arms property in Surfers Paradise.

Mr Witheriff yesterday said the D’Arcy Arms parcel was in a development hotspot near the beachfront Northcliffe Tce and offered both residential and tourism development options.

“It’s in a location where developers are seeking to meet sustained market demand, with developers such as Melbourne’s Central Equity and Brisbane’s David Devine planning major projects in the area.”