On The QT: Hope Island waterfront sold up by Chinese developer

Exclusive Gold Coast waterfront lots purchased by a Chinese developer just started selling for massive price tags. But one former owner is not happy.

HUIDONG, a frontrunner in a wave of Chinese investment on the Gold Coast, might well be ruing the day it held a winning property hand and folded.

That hand, a chunk of waterfront land at the Hope Island Resort, was picked up by a fellow Chinese group and has become a winning one.

Golden Horse, which in 2013 bought the resort’s golf course, has started selling the land as 46 housing lots.

They’re apparently cantering out the door, especially to existing residents on Hope Island, at prices that start above $500,000 and nudge $1 million.

All indications are that a sellout could yield at least $30 million, which could translate into a net earn for Golden Horse of $10 million or more.

That contrasts to a multimillion-dollar loss suffered by Huidong, which strayed from its knitting — operating restaurants in China.

The Hope Island Resort parcel fetched $11mil.

The Hope Island Resort parcel that tempted its tastebuds in 2010 is 3.55ha at the southern end of the golf course’s expansive driving-range lake.

Huidong paid Don O’Rorke’s Consolidated Properties $11 million for the raw land and then embarked on the $5 million job of preparing it as housing land.

Civil works stopped after around $3 million had been spent in an exercise that included moving endless tonnes of pre-load material on to the site.

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Subsequent owner Golden Horse trotted on to the Hope Island Resort scene in 2013 after snaring the Noosa Springs golf course.

It bought control of the resort’s golf course and clubhouse by buying the majority of the equity memberships in the Links golf club from Consolidated Properties.

The group cemented full control by buying back the balance of the memberships over a three-year period and also bought development land for a hotel and 29 residential titles.

The buyout of the land owned by Huidong, which as well as running a chain of restaurants in southern China is a major seafood importer, followed in 2014 at $10.12 million.

At the time it was suggested the restaurateur’s Hope Island losses, as well as $880,000 on the land and $3 million on earthworks, probably included well north of $1 million on body corporate fees and other holding costs.

The losses could have been more than $3mil total.

Those ‘losses’ will look even less palatable if, in fact, Golden Horse puts a $10 million or larger profit in its saddlebags.

Property profits are no new thing to Golden Horse — the company, founded in Hong Kong in 1989, has been a developer in major Chinese cities and has projects in Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast and Sydney.

Meanwhile, preparing and selling the Hope Island land seems to have diverted Golden Horse from its goal of building a hotel to marry in with its sprawling clubhouse.

It had intended to have the 150-room five-star hotel open this year, with a brand within the Accor group managing it.

There are now suggestions that the plan might be more than on hold — it might be at the back of the bottom draw to gather dust.

TONY Stephens, owner of a huge Yatala industrial estate, traded up when he sold a Monaco St home at Broadbeach Waters last week.

Tony Stephens bought the Monaco St home last week.

The value put on the riverfront house in the transaction was $7.5 million, with Tony and wife Alicia apparently adding $1 million-plus to move to a beachfront home.

It’s an Albatross Ave abode owned by former G8 childcare company exec Chris Sacre who’s leaving a 582 sqm lot to move on to the Stephens’ 1879 sqm block.

ROWEN Craigie, former CEO at the James Packer-linked Crown Resorts, has had a major win on the high life on the Gold Coast.

The Liberty Pacific penthouse has sold for a massive amount.

He and wife Susan Byrne have sold the two-level penthouse in Main Beach’s Liberty Pacific tower for $5.25 million, a gain of nearly $2 million in three years.

It’s some consolation for a $3.3 million ‘hit’ they took five years ago on a beachfront property at Mermaid Beach they’d bought ahead of the GFC.

THE AMP-run fund that owns Southport’s Ferry Road Market is believed to have a new operator lined up for the restaurant space which was occupied by the Spendelove Bistro and Bar at the heart of the market.

The fund owns the Ferry Road Market. Photo: David Clark

The business closed in early November after an administrator was appointed to operator Rick Munday’s company Spend Love over an alleged $920,000 tax debt.

The Spendelove furniture and fittings remain in place, with the administrator apparently hoping to sell them to a new operator.