Plans emerge for business park on Meadowbrook Golf Course land

Confidential documents have surfaced out of a bitter court row revealing plans for a major business and housing development on an embattled Logan golf course.

Confidential documents revealing plans to build a business park on a Logan golf course have surfaced as a bitter court row continues over a multimillion-dollar council compensation claim.

Meadowbrook Golf Club, in the heart of Logan, is suing Logan City Council for damages after council contractors spent five years digging up the golf course.

Logan City Council took two years to put down sewer pipes under the golf course.

The former golf course operators later went bankrupt.

Logan City Council held a closed-door meeting last month to discuss the Supreme Court lawsuit and other matters including building a new venue on the council-owned site, which is under lease to the golf course manager.

The management claims the council deliberately subjected it to a decade of financial turmoil while digging up the course for a city sewer pipe.

The council is fighting the case.

A Logan City Council Master Plan map showing plans to use golf course land for residential and office developments.

A masterplan map, showing a three-stage commercial business park along with housing covering nearly half of the golf links, was included in documents presented to the council by prospective developer Graystone Property Development.

Graystone is not a party to the Supreme Court proceedings.

Graystone director Peter Robbie was contacted but was overseas and unavailable for comment.

But Meadowbrook managing director Tom Linskey said Mr Robbie approached him in 2016 and asked to buy the council lease to the golf course.

“It was at the height of the golf course’s financial woes after we had endured years of disruption and closures,” Mr Linskey said.

“I was asked to sell the 90-year council lease over the golf course so the developer could build a technology and business park for the university, which is next door.

“We were only a third of the way through our lease and there was no way we were going to sell.

“The majority of the course land is a flood plain.”

Mr Linskey said the masterplan map was one of a number of documents that had been “uncovered”, including a letter from the then councillor Luke Smith about re-routing the pipeline through the golf links.

An excerpt of a letter from former Logan councillor Luke Smith about the plans to re-route the sewer line through the golf links.

A 2013 document showed the Logan Water Alliance won a national innovation award for re-routing the sewer main through the golf course, instead of along the existing main down the side of the M1 Motorway, saving ratepayers more than $83 million.

The award was presented despite the Alliance project coming in five years late and over budget.

The Meadowbrook Golf Club is suing Logan City Council for loss of revenue and disruption when the council was putting down sewer pipes

Mr Linskey said the council should have used some of the savings from putting the sewer line through the golf course to compensate the local golf course operators.

“The council allegedly saved more than $83 million by wrecking the golf course and the business, so spending $5 million on compensation to prop up the local operators should not have been an issue.”

Logan City Council was asked to comment.

Originally published as Plans emerge for business park on Meadowbrook Golf Course land