Shotgun marriage: Gold Coast gets a new $3.2 billion city on its doorstep
A massive bushland plot best known locally for being patrolled with an axe and a gun by renowned millionaire recluse “Spiney Bob” will become a new mini city on the Gold Coast.
The new $3.2 billion Pacific View Estate will eventually feature more than 3000 homes plus high-rise buildings (Photo: Pacific View Estates).
After a decade of negotiations, the development application for the $3.2 billion Pacific View Estate project covering 334 hectares will get the green light from the Gold Coast City Council.
As the Gold Coast continues its high-speed growth trajectory, the new mini city will accommodate up to 10,000 residents.
The estate, to the west of the motorway between Nerang and Mudgeeraba, will be built in stages. The first stage includes a village precinct, 35 detached housing lots, retail and education facilities centred on a private school.
All up, the estate is expected to have 3500 dwellings, ranging from houses to apartment buildings up to eight storeys high.
The go-ahead for the estate, after more than 10 years of planning, comes as housing in the southeast is under population-growth and affordability pressure.
Growth on the Gold Coast has been supercharged by the pandemic-induced southerner influx due to the global disruption of workplaces that has made working remotely and choosing lifestyle over proximity to the office a reality.
The Gold Coast, along with other Queensland coastal lifestyle hotspots such as the Sunshine Coast, are the targets of the southern migration following the opening of borders and the adoption of new widespread work-from-home measures.
The impact is being seen across the state, with Brisbane also experiencing sharp rises in interstate migrant flows pushing house values up 3.2 per cent to record highs, while regional Queensland housing values were up 6 per cent, according to the latest CoreLogic report.
The Pacific View Estate was first planned after Perth-based Perron Group bought the parcel of vacant land that belonged World War II veteran Robert “Spiney Bob” Anthes.
Anthes, who died in 2004, was known for his hermit lifestyle and run-ins with him while he was patrolling his land wielding an axe and a gun became Hinterland folklore. Anthes had inherited the land in 1972 from his father, John.
After years of stalemate, the project was called in by the State Government in 2015 and given preliminary approval.
Construction on the project is expected to add as many as 2700 jobs in a sector which has already seen significant recovery in the third quarter of the year on the Gold Coast, with activity up 11.7 per cent on the same time last year, according to a council development activity report.
