Vomitron Surfers Paradise: Surprise development planned for prime Gold Coast site
Long-awaited plans to redevelop Surfers Paradise’s famous “vomitron” land have been unveiled, with developers racing to transform the “bomb site”. SEE THE PLANS.
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A SMALL hotel with big neighbours could be coming to the playground that is Surfers Paradise - that’s the ‘tall’ and short of it.
A Chinese group which in May bought a corner of the full city block known as the Vomitron fun site wants to build a 15-level hotel on its land.
At the time of its buy there were no neighbours looming on the balance of the 1.05ha block, which has four street frontages.
How things changed three months later.
Australia’s apartments king Harry Triguboff surfaced and bought the rest of the site – part of which he’s visited to play putt-putt golf.
The 89-year-old head of the Meriton development juggernaut has announced he wants to build 1000 apartments on the land.
He says they’ll be spread across three buildings and, given he’s just finished one 76-floor tower across the road and has another one in the pipeline, they are unlikely to be ‘shorties’.
They could well and truly shade the planned Chinese hotel, both in size and height.
It could be that and Harry wishes he’d targeted the Vomitron site earlier – it had been on the market since 2019 - and consumed the whole cake rather than threequarters of it.
There have been suggestions he might latterly have had a nibble at buying out the hotel proponents but there’s no sign of him having any success.
Those proponents are Brisbane-based Yixin Li and Zheng Wang who, via company Horan No. 8, paid $8.53 million for its 2409 sqm buy.
Their ambition, subject to planning approval, is to build a hotel with 233 rooms, retail and food and drink outlets at street level, a 20-metre pool, a fitness centre, and a rooftop bar at level 15, along with function and meeting rooms.
The hotel, accessed off Cypress Ave, is not their only Gold Coast project.
They spent $6.58 million in 2021 amalgamating a 1214 sqm site at 11-13 Rosewood Ave, Broadbeach, and are planning a DBI-designed 32-floor tower with 127 apartments.
The Li-Wang group over the past decade has developed residential projects in Brisbane suburbs, including medium-rise apartment buildings at Redcliffe and Contarf.
They are not the only group targeting the hotel sector on the Gold Coast.
Others include Chris Vitale’s five-star Mondrian, under way at Burleigh Heads, and a 92-room venue at Kirra Point on the former Kirra Beach Hotel site.
A luxury hotel, flying under the flag of Gold Coast newcomer Ritz-Carlton, is planned as part of a $480 million redevelopment of Mariner’s Cove on the Southport Spit.
Also new to the city will be Sydney brothers Bill and Mario Gravanis who are buying the Crowne Plaza Hotel – the one with the revolving restaurant – for a reported $100 million.
Meanwhile, the Chinese trio that paid $36.5 million for the Vomitron site in 2016 hasn’t fared brilliantly.
The block was put on the market four years ago after there apparently was some dissension between the partners - billionaire Tony Fung’s Aquis group, CCCC International Holding and Tandellen.
The end result is that they have sold but only achieved around $38 million, before counting holding costs and commissions.
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Originally published as Vomitron Surfers Paradise: Surprise development planned for prime Gold Coast site
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