Kinkabool is a heritage-listed apartment block at 32–34 Hanlan Street, Surfers Paradise, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by John M. Morton of Lund Hutton Newell Black & Paulsen and built from 1959 to 1960 by J D Booker Constructions (Gold Coast) Pty Ltd. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 5 February 2009.
History
Background Prior to the 1950s Surfers Paradise was just one of a number of popular but modestly equipped beach holiday resorts that dotted the coast from Southport to the State border with New South Wales. During that decade it became the epicentre of the Gold Coast and what would become an international holiday destination, recognisable for its high-rise towers lining a long strip of sandy beach. This image of Gold Coast high-rise development began with the construction of Kinkabool in 1959–1960.
The coastal areas south of Brisbane – or what became known as the South Coast – had long been a destination for beach holidaymakers. From the 1860s holiday houses for the Brisbane elite and Darling Downs pastoralists were being constructed at Southport on the northern shore of the mouth of the Nerang River. Daily steamboat connections to Brisbane brought day-trippers. The construction of a rail link between Beenleigh and Southport in 1889 opened the area to nascent mass tourism.
The corridor of land now known as Surfers Paradise, between the Nerang River and the ocean beach, was attracting recreational visitors by the 1870s. The land on which Kinkabool stands was part of a selection taken up by James Beattie in 1869 and sold in 1877 to Johann Meyer, who established a vehicular ferry across the Nerang River in 1881, connecting the area with Southport. In clearing the road – later to become Cavill Avenue – that formed the northern boundary of his property he opened up public access to the ocean beach. At opposite ends of this road, Meyer established the first two hotels serving the area: Meyer's Ferry Hotel and the Main Beach Hotel. In 1885 he sold part of his land, which included the site Kinkabool now occupies, to James Stodart, who developed it as the area's first subdivision, Main Beach Estate, with streets named after world champion Australian scullers: Hanlan, Trickett, Laycock and Clifford. The Elston postal receiving office was established in Meyer's Ferry Hotel before the turn of the century, and gave its name to the area.
During the 1920s and 1930s a rapid rise in private motor vehicle ownership, the construction of a new coastal road between Brisbane and Southport, and the crossing of the Nerang River by the Jubilee Bridge led to the subdivision and sale of many estates between Southport and the New South Wales border. The intensity and complexion of this development was further evidenced by the first of Jim Cavill's famous hotels being built on the main road south through Elston in 1925, which was renamed Surfers Paradise in 1933 after successful lobbying by Jim Cavill and other local residents. This reflected the influence of American beach culture and a shift in preference from still-water bathing sites (as at Southport) to surf beaches. Further marketing in southern states of the "winter holiday" attractions of the South Coast was conducted in the years leading up to the commencement of World War II in 1939.
During World War II the South Coast proved a popular rest and recreation destination for combat troops, with many American, New Zealand and English servicemen and women enjoying the place and advertising its merits once home. Many of these international and interstate visitors were impressed by the beaches and climate and returned after the war to visit, reside or invest.
After building restrictions imposed during World War II were lifted in 1952, the South Coast changed rapidly. An intense period of building development and property speculation was ushered in, attracting a number of entrepreneurs focussed largely on the tourism potential of the place. The term "Gold Coast" was coined in response to this promise of prosperity and wealth, and despite beginning as a derisive term used by the Brisbane press, was embraced by locals and then officially adopted as the name of the Town Council in 1958. In the following year the municipality was declared a city. It is the spirit of this era that Kinkabool embodies. The dramatic changes to the built fabric of Surfers Paradise and the Gold Coast in general were succinctly described by Forbes and Spearritt in 2006: "Fibro holiday shacks, two-storey guesthouses and weatherboard boarding lodges were torn down and swept aside, first for three, four and five storey walk ups and later 10, 20, 30 and now 80 storey structures."
In the 1950s a greater capacity to pursue leisure (particularly among women, for whom a beach holiday had previously involved a continuation of everyday domestic tasks), the rise in private car ownership, and the growing preference among holidaymakers for American-style resorts, resulted in changed accommodation styles on the Gold Coast. Chief among these were motels (providing car parking outside each room), hotel resorts, and serviced apartments for visitors who had arrived not by car but by plane or coach. The hotel resorts, which were larger-scale tourist developments accommodating many more guests than the average public house, hotel or guest house, the forms relied upon in the past, included: the five-storey Lennon's Hotel in Broadbeach, designed by Dr Karl Langer in 1956, which included bars and beer garden, pool, tennis courts, dance floor and bandstand; and the three-storey Chevron Hotel in Surfers Paradise designed by David Bell and built for one of Stanley Korman's companies in 1958. The Carapark Motel at Mermaid Beach, designed by the Brisbane architectural firm Hayes and Scott in the mid-1950s was an example of a motel (with facilities for caravans). Others included the El Dorado and the Seabreeze. Serviced apartments were advertised as "luxurious", providing modern conveniences such as refrigerators, clothes washers and dryers, and stainless steel sinks. The kitchens of these apartments were comparatively small, suggesting that a holiday would also involve frequent dining out. Early examples included the South Pacific in Orchid Avenue and the Palm Grove in Clifford Street. All these places were low-rise buildings; all have been demolished.
The project Kinkabool is a ten-storey home-unit building located on Hanlan Street in the centre of Surfers Paradise, constructed by JD Booker Constructions Pty Ltd to the design of architect John M Morton working for the Brisbane office of the firm Lund Hutton Newell Black & Paulson Pty Ltd. Kinkabool was the brainchild of Stanley Korman, a Victorian entrepreneur whose other Gold Coast development projects, including Lennon's Hotel at Broadbeach (opened 1956, demolished 1987), the Chevron Hotel at Surfers Paradise (opened 1958, demolished 1987) and Paradise Island (opened 1958), embodied a vision of the place as a modern, international-standard holiday resort. The Gold Coast remains Queensland's premier beach tourism destination.
The iconic Gold Coast skyline of high-rises overlooking long sandy beaches commenced with the construction of ten-storey Kinkabool on Hanlan Street in the heart of Surfers Paradise in 1959–1960; described at the time by the local press as a "giant". A number of high-rise, home-unit developments had been planned for the Gold Coast in the 1950s, but Kinkabool was the only scheme to come to fruition. For example: two 25-storey home-unit "skyscrapers", one at Surfers Paradise on Orchid Avenue and another at Burleigh Heads, were planned by Torbreck Pty Ltd following the success of its Torbreck high-rise blocks in Highgate Hill, Brisbane; a 20-storey accommodation tower was to be added to the Chevron Hotel, its foundations being laid with 350 guests in attendance; and a 17-storey tower called Taj was to be built on Beach Road in Surfers, foundation drilling having commenced in 1959.
The development and finance for Kinkabool were formally arranged by Booker Felton Pty Ltd however a number of companies contributed to its marketing and construction finance. One of the key figures in this matrix was Victorian entrepreneur, Stanley Korman, whose other major ventures on the Gold Coast were the nearby Chevron Hotel and Paradise Island, as well as Lennon's Hotel at Broadbeach and the remodelling of the Surfers Paradise Hotel - the area's leisure and civic hub - which he had purchased from Jim Cavill's widow in 1957. Polish-born Korman had emigrated to Australia in the late 1920s and established the Holeproof clothing company. His business ventures and the charisma he applied to them had established his popular profile as a successful entrepreneur in Victoria. He had a powerful vision of the Gold Coast, and in particular Surfers Paradise, as a modern holiday resort; his inspirations being resorts he visited in Hawaii and Florida. As historian Michael Jones reported in 1986, Korman made the startling suggestion at the time that "southern" businessmen should be able to fly to their Gold Coast holiday unit or home on Friday evening after work, enjoy the beach and warm climate over the weekend, and then fly back to work on Monday morning. And as Alexander McRobbie suggested in The Real Surfers Paradise (1988), Korman also foresaw that many average Australians would come to thrill at the prospect of spending their holidays in a high-rise apartment with a view of the beach, in contrast to their everyday lives and the low-set suburbs that formed its backdrop.
Approval, construction and design The Gold Coast Town Council approved the nine storey home-unit building being designed to the Hanlan Street boundary and partially to the other boundaries. Morton explains that this was possible because the building regulations, introduced in 1954, were not conceived with this kind of high-rise building in mind. Kinkabool's financiers were eager to take advantage of the 1950s Gold Coast building boom before tighter building controls were introduced.
Construction began some time after July 1959 when the building agreement between Kinkabool Pty Ltd and Multi Units Pty Ltd (the latter appears to have encompassed JD Booker Constructions Pty Ltd), was signed. The cost of construction, including architect's and engineer's fees, was estimated at this point at . The first stage, comprising two rear car parking areas, two commercial tenancies to the ground floor and eight storeys of four units each was completed soon after May 1960. After this, but before October, twin two-bedroom units had been added over part of the ninth floor and facing the street, mirroring the layout below and designated as penthouses. Such a feature had formed part of the building's design from its inception; however, more lavish ideas for double-storey units with observation decks had been abandoned.