GREEN LIGHT FOR GREENFIELD THE DOONAN

Comiskey Group has gotten the green light to start construction at its new family-friendly greenfield pub and cellar door – The Doonan.

The family that created the enormous and award-winning Eatons Hill Hotel and Sandstone Point Hotel bought the nearly 2-Ha site of a former restaurant on Eumundi Noosa Road 15 years ago, but the project has been delayed by a skirmish with Sunshine Coast Council.

An application was submitted late 2018, garnering 145 submissions, including only five against the project.

Despite the general favourability, the application was denied by Sunshine Coast Council mid-2019, reportedly on grounds including flooding concerns and conflicts with its own Doonan Creek Reserve planning scheme.

The Comiskeys consequently took Council to the Planning and Environment Court over the rejection. In July this year the Court overruled the decision, judge Michael Williamson upholding the appeal and giving Council notice of one month to provide conditions to approve the project.

On Friday the parties agreed to what were almost 90 conditions for the plans to proceed.

Rob Comiskey says this project is different to anything he has done before – not a traditional hotel, with a public bar and TAB, it is said to be more akin to a family-friendly venue “in the middle of a nursery”.

“We don’t usually buy things off the shelf,” he adds. “It took a bit of designing.”

The pub’s main focus will be food and beverage, taking place in 2,000sqm of gardens and 400sqm of outdoor areas, including space for people to kick a ball around, and a large kids’ playground.

“You enter under a big water tank stand, beside grass mounds with tunnels under them and wire netting above that kids can get up, and go through a high ropes course inside … it’s pretty unique.”

But there will also be a cellar door, ranging local wines and craft beers.

The Doonan takes inspiration from The Grounds, in Sydney’s Alexandria, and Fraser Short’s The Farm, at Byron Bay. It is set to have capacity for around 225 people and will be open every day.

Three Comiskeys – Rob, father Paul and brother David – have been planning this build for more than a decade. Some time ago they welcomed long-time friends and hotel owners Joshua Jones and Neville Allen in as business partners.

Prolific developers of both new and existing sites, the Comiskey Group is currently almost doubling the size of the already sprawling Sandstone Point Hotel, completing over 100 new accommodation sites as well as adding a pump track, second pool – with a bar, a spa and an arcade.

The family-oriented family-owned Group subscribes to the notion that the kids take the parents.

“For us, the really big focus going forward, more than ever, is on families,” adds Rob Comiskey.

The finalised approval means construction can begin early 2022 and the developers hope for completion by the end of 2023.