McDonald’s Gold Coast: New fast food restaurant planned for Helensvale site

A service station beside a busy junction will be redeveloped and expanded, with new plans revealing a McDonald’s drive through will be built on the site. SEE THE PLANS

A service station on the edge of a residential suburb will be redeveloped and expanded, with new plans revealing a McDonalds will be built on the site.

Plans have been filed to transform the site on the corner of Helensvale’s Discovery and Sir John Overall Drives into a 3514sq m complex, which will see the existing BP taken over by new operator United.

The location adjoins the busy intersection between Discovery Dr and the Gold Coast Highway, where the department of Transport and Main Roads is currently clearing vegetation and installing signalised pedestrian crossings to improve safety.

The McDonalds, the latest in a large number of new fast food outlets being built across the city, will have dine-in and drive-through facilities, as well as an indoor children’s playground.

New toilets, storage areas and a kitchen will be built into the complex.

Its construction comes 30 years after the suburb’s first McDonalds was built on Siganto Drive.

And more are planned for the city’s north, with council ticking off several new McDonalds in the past year, including a $30m fast food and retail hub near the Coomera Town Centre development.

Artist impressions of the new McDonald's planned for Discovery Drive in Helensvale.

Development around Helensvale’s old retail precinct has become increasingly controversial in the past 18 months.

In May 2021 Horizontal Investment, the owners of Helensvale Plaza shopping centre, filed a development application for a 12-storey mixed-use medium-rise building which was to feature 45 units and space for restaurants and commercial tenancies on its ground floor.

The project required the demolition of the suburb’s well-loved Red Rooster restaurant.

The decision was approved in November last year.

Site of the BP service station on Discovery Drive in Helensvale. Picture: Google Maps.

Area residents had been resolutely against the proposal, with some claiming local roads would be “unable to cope” with the development.

“We don’t need a multistorey monstrosity dead bang in a quiet part of Helensvale. Traffic will be atrocious,” Storm Brooke said, after Cr William Owen-Jones posted information about the development on social media.

Queensland’s first McDonalds was built on the Gold Coast in 1975.

The fast food giant has long been rumoured to be interested in building a new restaurant in the Helensvale area.

In January 2021 reports emerged that it was eyeing the former NightQuarter site, which also adjoins the same Gold Coast Highway junction as the current proposal.

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