Comiskey’s $1b future build plans

The Comiskey Group has always called Moreton Bay home. It’s where the family firm started and is expanding – at a rapid rate.

Already Queensland’s most awarded hospitality group Comiskey is investing heavily in Moreton Bay, creating thousands of jobs and Olympic infrastructure.

Director Rob Comiskey told a recent Pine Rivers Chamber of Commerce meeting the company currently has “about $1 billion of projects to future build”.

That includes two new five-star hotels at North Lakes and Sandstone Point, as well as a huge new indoor sporting, recreation and hotel complex in Strathpine.

Comiskey projects will collectively provide around 1000 new hotel/accommodation rooms in Moreton Bay and beyond – as well as huge economic benefits.

Putting that in perspective, (organisers) need about 3600 rooms before the 2032 Olympics and we’re on schedule to build almost a third of those,” Rob said.

The key for this family-owned, Moreton Bay-based company is striving for quality and “reinvesting back into it”.

“Eatons Hill Hotel has been around for 15 years and we’ll go for the third or fourth renovation,” Rob said. “We’re always looking at how we can reinvent what we do.”

Using the maxim “go big or go home”, Eatons Hill Hotel was built at a reported cost of $45 million and opened in 2015, creating hundreds of jobs.

But that is dwarfed by plans to expand the Sandstone Point venue with a new five-start hotel, built in two 10-storey towers with 202 rooms.

It is estimated to be costing $250 million, will create around 995 jobs, 117,000 visitor nights and an estimated visitor spend of $143.3 million each year. 

The proposed nine-storey, 141-room North Lakes Hotel is costing around $180 million, but will create 880 jobs and a local economic boost of $538 million.

Comiskey’s new Country Club Hotel, at the entrance to Strathpine, is well under way, costing $50 million and creating 500 new jobs.

Add to these dozens of new jobs at the $35 million Dakabin Hotel and estimated 150 jobs with the planned $68 million Aura Hotel in Caloundra South.

The Comiskey Group has also spent $25 million buying and renovating the Imperial Hotel at Eumundi, $6 million upgrading The Doonan and still runs Samford Hotel.

Plans are ongoing for the huge Coochin Creek festival site, estimated to cost $35 million, which will create 550 jobs, 180,000 annual visitor nights and a $60 million economic benefit.

Coochin Creek Resort is costing another $35 million and we await plans for the former Albany Links golf course, around Eatons Hill Hotel, which cost $3.5 million.

It’s all a far cry from the day co-founder Paul Comiskey opened his first development – a squash and fitness centre in Strathpine in 1974.

Australia’s first indoor skate park followed in 1988, then Finnegan’s Chin pub at Kallangur in 2001 and Tadpoles Childcare, which grew to 37 centres from 2004-2010.

The Comiskey Group, as we know it today, was formed in 20024 and moved into hospitality in 2007 when Beachmere Tavern opened. 

Four years later bought a former golf driving range site at Eatons Hill … and the rest is history.