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Hot on the heels of the approval of south-east Queensland’s first surf park, another developer has pulled out on their own wave pool.
Brisbane-based Consolidated Properties Group announced it had sold its significant 120ha landholding at Coolum on the Sunshine Coast, where it had proposed a Kelly Slater surf park.
The Sunshine Coast Council has acquired the site for $6 million.
The land is slated to be amalgamated into the Blue Heart Sunshine Coast parcel of land and restored to wetlands, which would be used as flood storage.
The remainder of the 510ha cane farm is privately owned, according to the council.
It marks the end of the ride for the contentious Sunshine Coast surf park, which had been mired in community opposition.
Consolidated Properties Group chairman Don O’Rorke said he was “disappointed not to be able to deliver the Kelly Slater Wave Pool”.
“But we do understand the Sunshine Coast Council’s strong desire to protect flood plain capacity and maintain these lands in public hands in perpetuity,” O’Rorke said.
The company believed in climate change and as such supported the council’s initiative, he said.
Surf Ranch Sunshine Coast was to be part of a broader tourism development precinct that included a 6-star eco-lodge, event and training facilities, tourism accommodation, Indigenous cultural experiences, a school, farm-to-plate cuisine and other food and beverage experiences, a microbrewery and residential development.
Meanwhile, the council in one of Australia’s surfing heartlands—the Gold Coast—has thrown its support behind plans for the city’s first wave park.
The centrepiece of the $300-million resort-style proposal now approved by the Gold Coast City Council is a 4ha dual-zone surfing lagoon capable of generating “up to a 26-second end-to-end barrelling six-foot wave ride” with technology by Endless Wave.
It will sit alongside an existing 18-hole golf course at the site at Parkwood, about a 15-minute drive from the Glitter Strip’s world-famous surf breaks.
