Vomitron amusement site touted as the best home for second Gold Coast casino

BILLIONAIRE Tony Fung and his Chinese partners are believed poised to cash in their chips on the Surfers Paradise Vomitron amusement site touted as potentially the best home for a second Gold Coast casino.

Tony Fung. Picture: Richard Gosling

TONY Fung, Honkers billionaire and racehorse owner and breeder, and his Chinese partners are believed poised to cash in their chips on a Surfers Paradise site touted as potentially the best home for a second Gold Coast casino.

The Vomitron amusement ride site, a full city block at the northern end of the CBD, could come cantering out of the marketing starting gates in the next week or so.

Vomitron Ride on the Gold Coast

The holding, which spans 1.05ha and has frontages to both Surfers Paradise Blvd and Ferny Ave, is equally owned by Tony’s Aquis group and Chinese companies CCCC International Holding and Tandellen.

Tony Fung. Picture: Richard Gosling

The move to sell it will be the final nail in the coffin for the trio’s ambition of undertaking a four-tower masterplanned project that also would have included the site of the former International Beach Resort overlooking the ocean on The Esplanade.

The partners, who paid Japan’s Orix group $36.5 million for the Vomitron site two years ago, own it through Aquis Hotel Investment Holdings.

There were signs last year one or more of the partners might have been becoming restless and wanted out.

It appears that in the last fortnight they mutually have agreed to market the site, amalgamated for Japanese group Daikyo by an entrepreneurial fellow called John Minuzzo nearly
30 years ago.

A major factor in their timing, apart from obvious marketing exposure during the Commonwealth Games, has been a State Government indication that it supports a second casino.

Perhaps the Vomitron partners believe that “indication” might sway the likes of Las Vegas casino operators — Caesars Entertainment has been looking at the Gold Cost — to put a hand up for the land.

The Fung camp and CCCC International, back in 2015, had a deal to buy the beachfront Sheraton Mirage as a potential casino site but became uncomfortable over issues such as height restrictions and the Ponzi-scheme problems of Indian owner Pearls.

They moved on and bought the Vomitron site, took out an option on the elderly International Beach Resort (originally the Apollo), and had an arrangement to buy a scooter-hire site
next to the resort.

The Vomitron ride in Surfers Paradise. SUPPLIED PIC

The grand plan was to link the Vomitron site, with three towers, to the beachfront holding, with one.

The deal on the International Beach Resort did not go ahead and it was snaffled by high-rise king Harry Triguboff.

Any serious contender for the Vomitron site quickly will realise, city council willing, there is potential to virtually double the size of the holding.

The council owns the near 7000sq m Cypress Ave car park across the road from Vomitron and might agree to put it on the open market, and also close the intervening section of Cypress Ave, if requested. Perhaps the nearby vacant 1153sq m site of the former Surfers City Motel also might be “available”.