Sunshine Park, $90 million water park planned for Sunshine Coast

A Sunshine Coast based consultancy has lodged a proposal for Sunshine Park, a tourist resort that combines a water park, hotel and holiday village.

The proposed resort combines accommodation and water park facilities in the first singificant water park plan to surface on the Sunshine Coast since the aborted plans to convert Aussie World into a Wet'n'Wild park.

The central attraction to the resort would be the world's first installation of a Webber Wave Pool, a unique artificial wave concept that is able to produce clean, surfable waves of considerable length unlike the wave pools found in most Australian water parks.

Swellnet reports that the Webber Wave Pool will be a 160x90m pool that can create surfable, barrel waves up to 1.6m (5ft), with room at the site to expand with a second 200x100m pool capable of 2m (6ft) waves. The Webber system can generate 500 waves per hour lasting 15 seconds. Each wave can be have its shape and height altered to suit the surfer, with multiple waves and multiple surfers in the linear loop pool.

Surfer Today revealed in March that Webber Wave Pools had signed a memorandum of understanding with David Baird, a surfing enthusiast and entrepreneur who is reportedly the owner of the 24 hectare parcel of land at Glenview, though at that stage the location for the planned installation was not known.

"We believe that Sunshine Park will complement the existing attractions in the area and firmly establish the location as a major tourism precinct," Baird told the Courier-Mail newspaper today.

The plans for the water park are at this stage vague with the development application only mentioning pools, a lazy river, waterslides and play structures. Landscape concepts show only a generic array of pools and slides, with no indication of the true scope and nature of the water park beyond the wave pool.

The Sunshine Park concept also has plans for a 120 room limited service hotel and 100 cabins in a holiday village as part of a second phase of development. Plans indicate that other recreational offerings will be available including bush walking, canoeing and pony rides, as well as restaurants and cafes.

This isn't the first planned water park for the Sunshine Coast. There have been unrelated proposals as far back as Village Roadshow's 2004 Wet'n'Wild announcement, 2007's Adventura Water Park and Village Roadshow again in 2008 with plans to convert Aussie World into a Wet'n'Wild, among others.

"All things going well, our team hopes to begin work next year and have the first Sunshine Park guests splashing, surfing and sliding on what will be Australia’s latest waterpark during 2016," Baird told the Courier-Mail.