On the QT: Game designer’s $7.8m property play, Varsity tavern’s new owners plus more gossip

Read the latest in Gold Coast property gossip from Quentin Tod.

PETER Hawes, a board-game designer who has sold a Brisbane home for $15 million, has bought a $7.8 million super-site on the Sovereign Islands.

The 2053sqm Regents Crt parcel involves three of the five lots in the Regents Point estate, developed by Gary Collison on the land he’s owned for more than two decades.

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Peter, a doctor who is a former Australian touch football and athletics rep and these days is living at Main Beach, invented the Kayal board games, which sell internationally.

KOREAN buyers have emerged as the new owners of the Varsity Lakes Tavern, bought from Brisbane’s Ganim family for $38 million, but they won’t be pulling the beers.

The deal, announced late last year, was settled last month by Victorian-based Hyunshik and Changsook Kim who acquired not just the tavern – leased to the ALH group -- but also an adjoining Dan Murphy’s bottleshop and Fitness First gym.

Varsity Lakes Tavern site, flanking Bermuda St and Santa Maria Crt.

Asian buyers, this time Chinese, are believed to be behind the $22.2 million off-the-plan buy of Pimpama Central Tavern, to be operated by Sirromet wines owner Terry Morris’s pub group.

LINDSAY Sinclair, founder of bathroom supplies business Highgrove, is making a fresh attempt to ‘tap’ into a wealthy buyer who wants land on which to build in Mermaid Beach’s Multi-Millionaires’ Row.

Lindsay bought a corner 405sqm Hedges Ave lot from developer John Potter for $4.6 million in 2018, mooting a Hamptons-style home, and two years ago was chasing offers above $5 million.

Beachfront land in the strip has climbed to $19,000 a square metre, potentially valuing the Sinclair lot at more than $7.5 million.