Hedges Avenue: Inside Hedges Ave’s most controversial disputes of exclusive Gold Coast strip

Hedges Ave is the Gold Coast’s most exclusive address but it’s also been at the centre of some highly controversial disputes involved famous figures. FIND OUT MORE

Hedges Ave is the Gold Coast’s most exclusive address, home to mansions, millionaires and sporting stars.

With absolute beachfront access and no high-rises, it is famously known as “millionaire’s row”.

It made national news again this week after a woman was caught on video deliberately destroying a garden planted along a Hedges Avenue property’s front boundary.

The woman owned up to it online saying her act was “out of frustration with the council. Been trying for years (to get) them to upgrade the footpath,”

Hedges Avenue has been at the centre of many big Gold Coast moments.

It’s just the latest moment in the street’s long history.

It was named after William Hedges, a shop owner who moved into real estate after World War I.

He spent much of the 1920s selling blocks of land around what is today called Hedges Ave and at one point owned more than 32 acres across the region.

The beachside strip gained its reputation as the city’s peak street at the turn of the 21st century and has never looked back.

Hedges Avenue Mermaid Beach in 1940s

In 1984, the average price for 405sq m beachfront lots in Hedges Ave was $330,000.

A year later a handful of properties surpassed $500,000 mark for the first time.

It rose to $750,000 by the mid-1990s during a period in which Hedges Ave was dubbed “the golden strip”.

By the late 1990s it had been renamed “millionaire’s row”.

In January 2000, a run-down beach cottage on a 405sq m corner site sold for a record $1.34m or $3308 a square metre.

There’s been plenty of controversies in the past 20 years.

In 2003, beachfront millionaires came under fire from the council, state government and other Coast residents for turfing over the sand tunes in front of their mansions and landscaping them.

2003: Turf was put on public land fronting a Hedges Avenue Mermaid Beach property.

This so-called “sand grab” came at a cost of more than $200,000.

The Hedges Ave residents claimed they were protecting the beaches, while critics argued it was a case of the wealthy expanding their backyards into public space.

Among those at the forefront of the fight was millionaire milk baron Ken Lacey who faced fines of up to $30,000 for building a rock wall and laying turf on the dunes.

Mr Lacey argued he was restoring the dunes to their “natural state” and was trying to stop dust from getting into his pool.

He challenged the council to rip up the turf, something then-councillor Eddy Sarroff was only too happy to order in December 2003.

Ken and Madeleine Lacey at their now-demolished mansion.

“`I’m very disappointed that rather than comply, this particular resident has thumbed his nose at the council and laid turf on top of the rock wall and fill,’’ Cr Sarroff said at the time.

Mr Lacey ultimately sold his mansion and it was eventually demolished.

Fast forward to 2010 and Hedges Ave residents wanted to make their street even more exclusive.

Residents campaigned to close millionaire’s row to tourist traffic and make it residents-only.

The wealthy property owners argued the chances of a fatality were far higher given the road’s narrow width and popularity with “joggers, pram-pushers and skateboarders”.

Hedges Ave has long been the Gold Coast’s most exclusive strip.

Then-councillor Greg Betts poured cold water on the idea, but it was just the start of an escalating series of rows which ran through the early-to-mid 2010s.

In 2011, the Mermaid Beach Community Association campaigned for their council rates to be slashed on the back of property values falling 40 per cent in just over a year during the prolonged fallout from the global financial crisis.

Helmetless cyclist at Mermaid Beach on Hedges Avenue. Cyclists and speed limits have been long-running issues.

By 2013 the association called for chicanes and widened footpaths on their exclusive strip after paying big bucks for a traffic report to prove it had become a rat run. An independent report found the local road was busier than a single lane of the neighbouring Gold Coast Highway during morning peak times, and was over capacity with local amenities compromised.

Council responded more than two years later by lowering the speed limit to 30km/h in a bid to deter drivers from using it, something which did cut traffic.