• Address: 170 and 171 Dreamworld Parkway, Coomera, Gold Coast (two lots)
• Land area: approximately 2.78 hectares
• Frontage: Pacific Motorway, beside Dreamworld
• Price: $30 million
• Rate: roughly $1,080 per square metre of land (our calculation from the reported price and area)
• Buyer: Spotlight Property Group (SPG), headquartered in Melbourne
• Seller: Gordon Corp, a Brisbane-based developer
• Method: off-market sale
• Agent: Marlon Crawford, Colliers
• Buyer's plan: a retail centre on part of the land

This is not a fresh piece of land. Around a decade ago Gordon Corp put forward a masterplan for the Dreamworld Parkway holding that included a 12-level hotel with 300 suites plus two residential towers of 22 and 27 storeys. The towers would have sat above a retail, dining and entertainment precinct aimed at the theme park crowd.

At the time it was billed as Coomera's first real high-rise project. The scheme went through a long approvals process and was revised in later years but the towers were never built. Reports on the sale now describe that earlier masterplan as redundant.

Gordon Corp director Tim Gordon said the company had also weighed up subdividing the land. In the end it chose to sell the whole holding to an owner-occupier that could make the most of the site, rather than carve it up and sell it in pieces.

Spotlight Property Group director and owner Zac Fried said the planned centre would be built to serve both locals and visitors. That dual audience is the whole point of this location. Coomera sits about 28 kilometres north of Surfers Paradise, on the motorway between the Gold Coast and Brisbane, with one of Australia's best known theme parks next door.

Fried pointed to the strength of the Gold Coast visitor economy and Queensland's population growth as the reasons Coomera suits a retail play. He also flagged that any design will need to consider airspace development across the wider site. In other words, the buyer is not ruling out more density above or around the retail over time.

For a group that owns and develops large-format and retail property, a motorway-fronting block of nearly three hectares in a growth corridor is rare. Land of this size with that kind of exposure tends to be either locked up by major owners or already built out. Buying it as an occupier also means SPG can plan the centre around its own needs rather than chasing a pre-commitment before it starts.

For Gordon Corp the sale closes a long chapter. The developer held the land through years of planning and market cycles, including the period when its hotel and tower scheme was the centrepiece. Selling off-market to a buyer with a clear use avoids a drawn-out public campaign and the cost of pushing a new approval through council.

The timing also looks deliberate. With the state having just signed off on a broader plan for the Dreamworld precinct, certainty around the neighbourhood has rarely been higher. That kind of clarity tends to lift what buyers will pay for adjoining land, because the risk of an unknown neighbour or a stalled precinct falls away.

On 20 July 2026 the Queensland Government approved the Dreamworld Masterplan covering 55.3 hectares of land in and around Dreamworld and WhiteWater World. The land is owned by Coast Entertainment Holdings. The application had been called in by Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie in October 2025 at the request of the City of Gold Coast Mayor.

The approved plan is split into four precincts:

• continued operation and expansion of the two theme parks
• low-impact eco-tourism such as boardwalks, viewing platforms and guided tours
• tourist attractions, short-term accommodation, resort complexes, hospitality and entertainment venues
• high-density residential and mixed-use development

Permitted uses include multiple dwellings, retirement and residential care facilities, retail, business and hospitality. Conditions include staged delivery, compliance with the Dreamworld Development Code and incremental upgrades to the local road network as development happens. No construction timetable has been announced. Individual projects will still need their own detailed planning applications.

For anyone holding land along Dreamworld Parkway, that approval matters. It signals that the area around the theme parks is set to become a denser mixed-use precinct rather than a tourism island surrounded by car parks. A retail centre on the SPG site would sit right at the doorstep of that growth.

The Coomera sale adds to a busy year for Gold Coast commercial property:

• Gold Coast Tavern, Benowa: sold off-market to the Irvin Hotel Group for close to $25 million in July, via HTL Property. The seller had paid $12 million for the venue in 2011.
• Seabank, 12-14 Marine Parade, Southport: Strada Group sold the 11-level office to Brisbane asset manager Exceed Capital for $44.7 million, up from the $34.05 million it paid in 2017.
• Paradise Centre and Novotel, Surfers Paradise: the Lin family-linked Forest Endeavour agreed to pay $346.5 million for the mixed-use landmark earlier this year.

Land deals are harder to compare than income-producing assets because so much depends on zoning, access and what can be built. Still, a $30 million price for under three hectares on the northern Gold Coast shows how much buyers are prepared to pay for scale, exposure and a strong neighbouring use.

Coomera has been one of the Gold Coast's main population growth areas for years, with new estates, a train station on the Gold Coast line and the Westfield Coomera centre already in place. Big retail and mixed-use players have been circling the corridor as new households keep moving in.

Land suitable for large-format retail in that corridor is getting harder to find. Much of the flat, accessible land near the motorway has already been taken up by housing estates, industrial parks or existing centres. That scarcity is a big part of why a site of nearly three hectares beside the motorway and a major attraction could command a $30 million price, even without an active approval for the buyer's planned use.

A second major retail destination near Dreamworld would compete for that spending but it would also serve the millions of tourists who visit the theme parks each year. That blend of resident and visitor trade is something few Gold Coast suburbs outside Surfers Paradise and Broadbeach can offer.

The deal is also a reminder that occupiers are back in the land market. Owner-occupiers can often justify a higher price than a pure developer because they are not relying on a sell-down margin. That lifts the benchmark for other owners in the area thinking about selling.

• Timing around approvals matters. Selling soon after a major neighbouring approval can capture the lift in certainty before the market fully prices it in.
• Old plans can hold a site back. A redundant masterplan can make buyers nervous. Showing a clear path to a new use helps them see the upside.
• Know who the natural buyer is. Gordon Corp targeted an occupier rather than another developer and that shaped the deal.
• Exposure sells. Motorway frontage and a famous neighbour are worth showing properly, with aerials, precinct mapping and clear site plans that make the location obvious at a glance.
• Off-market still needs a story. Even without a public campaign, buyers need clean information on the land, the planning context and the surrounding growth.

The next step is a development application from Spotlight Property Group for the retail centre. Watch for the size of the centre, which part of the 2.78 hectares it will use and whether the airspace Fried mentioned turns into housing, accommodation or other uses above the retail.

Next door, Coast Entertainment will begin working through detailed applications under the Dreamworld Masterplan, starting with projects such as a proposed family hotel. As those approvals arrive the Dreamworld Parkway strip could become one of the most closely watched pockets of land on the Gold Coast.