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 FOR the second time this month, an Asia-based developer has purchased a prominent Victorian golf course, and is proposing to build a $55 million hotel, apartment-based complex and new 18-hole golf course, next door.
An as-yet-undisclosed syndicate, which will be part controlled locally, is understood to have paid more than $7 million for the massive St Andrews Beach Golf Course and Resort, on the Mornington Peninsula.
As well as the Gunnamatta course, a temporary club room and 20 apartments, the purchase includes an adjoining development site, which will yield another 18-hole course, club room, 40-room hotel, licensed commercial premises, and about 120 apartments.
These apartments could yield the new owner about of $35 million, if onsold to private investors, and would be one of the biggest medium density projects in provincial Victoria.
A golf-course based residential redevelopment also follows the tradition of courses at Moonah Links, Cape Schanck and Thirteenth Beach.
Knight Frank director Michael Hede said the new owners plan to upgrade the existing Tom-Doak designed Gunnamatta course, and get started building the second course and hotel, soon.
Mr Hede said the mortgagee in possession’s decision to re-open the course, before listing it for sale earlier this year, was a key ingredient in achieving the price result.
The golf course failed to sell at the start of the economic downturn, in 2008, after shutting about six months earlier.
Earlier this month, BusinessDay reported Asia-based investors are in advanced negotiations to buy Doncaster’s Eastern Golf Course for more than $100 million.
The Eastern is expected to make way for a $1 billion-plus mixed use redevelopment of shops, offices and apartments – possibly with a component of social housing, in keeping with the Federal and State Government’s push to merge public and private housing residents, within new buildings and major master-planned projects.
A major, and soon-to-be-prominent, nine-level public housing complex has recently started construction a little further east of Doncaster, in Ringwood.
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