$60 million hotel plan aims for an eco-friendly development
A BUDERIM husband and wife will this week lodge a development application for a $60 million, 125-suite, 5 to 6 star luxury resort and spa on the southern escarpment of Buderim Mountain.
Kim Carroll and Heidi Meyer hope to develop the 4ha Box St site of their family home into "Badderam" Eco Luxe Resort and Spa, to be built by 2025 or earlier.
The ambitious project, named after the local Aboriginal place name for Buderim meaning "honeysuckle banksia", would incorporate 125 hotel suites with 177 car parks, two restaurants, a cafe, conference, wedding and function facilities, and a wellness spa.
While the scale of the development is unprecedented for Buderim, the owners said no expense was spared in ensuring the site's natural character would be preserved and the hotel's "impeccable" environmental credentials would "lead the Sunshine Coast".
Creative director Heidi Meyer said the site would retain 100% of its remnant vegetation, building roofs and walls would contain 5000sq m of "green roof technology". Guests would be transferred through the complex by electric cars and golf buggies, and the hotel would utilise an organic waste composter to become the first zero-waste resort in Queensland.
She said extensive geotechnical evaluations had been done with 12 test pits and 12 boreholes which concluded the site was geotechnically suitable for the proposal.
Box St, a quiet dead-end street situated off busy King St, would need to be widened to accommodate two-way traffic and an increase of an average of 152 extra vehicle trips in morning and evening peak periods. A proposal for a protected right-hand turning lane from eastbound King St traffic turning into Box St was included in the plans.
Mrs Meyer said she and her husband, who moved to Buderim with daughter Chalcot 18 months ago, were "not developers".
"We came to Buderim to have a family vegetable patch and to retire," she said.
"That was going to be our life and our nature nest."
But after a neighbour sprung an unexpected 22-townhouse development on the border of their own property, the couple made the decision to develop themselves - but after their own experience with developers, they were determined to do it in "the right way".
"(Some developments) are shrouded in shareholdings and 'Pty Ltds'," Mrs Meyer said. "There's nothing transparent, and you can't actually ask questions or get to the heart or the core of it.
"You can spend thousands of dollars on legal fees trying to understand and fight to keep your amenity and you can get absolutely nowhere.
"We didn't want to do that to other people."
The couple said they had employed a team of 35, including town planners, engineers, environmental scientists, waste management experts and cultural advisors, to oversee the project.
"We're really trying something different," Mrs Meyer said. "Even our personal names will actually go on the development proposal.
"I don't know anyone else who has made themselves quite that vulnerable."
The application is impact-assessable, which means the public can lodge submissions to Sunshine Coast Council during an official notification period.
The material change of use application will be viewable on the PD Online tool.
The couple said they were open to public comments via their websitehttp://www.badderam.com.au.
Source: Sunshine Coast Daily, Sophie Meixner, 26th November 2015
Originally published as: $60 million hotel plan aims for an eco-friendly development
