australia Watson Takes To the Greens

One of Australia’s biggest home builders is moving ahead with plans to build more than 2,000 houses around a golf course in Queensland.

Mirvac will build the community on 1,225 acres around Gainsborough Greens Golf Course, an 18-hole track in Oxenford, a town that’s 40 miles southeast of Brisbane. Mirvac, which started selling the houses a month or so ago, figures the property can accommodate 2,292 single-family houses and other housing types, a community center, a shopping area and a medical center.

Mirvac has co-owned Gainsborough Greens since 2006, but it assumed sole ownership last year. It’s hired Ross Watson to oversee a four-year renovation of the 6,637-yard golf course, which was designed by Fred Bolton and opened in 1990. Watson, who’s based in Robina, Queensland, expects to create what will essentially be a new layout, complete with a new clubhouse. Some of the track’s holes will be rerouted to accommodate the houses.

Mirvac has been selling houses for nearly 40 years, and it has a subsidiary that manages 45 hotel properties (roughly 5,600 hotel rooms) in Australia and New Zealand. The company is also building houses around another course in suburban Brisbane, the Greg Norman-designed Brookwater Golf Course in Brookwater.

Watson has designed two courses that Golf Australia ranks among the nation’s top 50: Magenta Shores Golf Club in New South Wales and Pacific Harbour Golf Club in Queensland.