New Plans for Canggu Club

BALI-BASED entrepreneur Tony Smith has bought the island's only private members club, the Canggu Club near Seminyak, with plans to redevelop the 3.54ha site into a luxury resort and sporting centre.
The businessman, property dealer and former AFL player recently sold the luxury 63-room Semara Resort & Spa complex in Seminyak, which he developed with his Balinese partner, to a couple of Singapore-based developers. Mr Smith left the Gold Coast amid the global financial crisis four years ago.
As well as redeveloping the Canggu Club, which features a school and sporting facilities, Mr Smith and his wife, Simone, together with their Balinese partner, plan to increase the club's membership from its present level of approximately 700. Mr Smith said the club's facilities would be greatly improved.
They have bought the club and its site on a 41-year lease but are looking to extend the lease.

First, they want to build a sports and recreation club for members and visitors, then an accommodation resort where guests can use the club's facilities.
A third stage could see the development of a beach club at the Smiths' ocean-front Canggu villa nearby. The beach club would be open to the public but also connected to the Canggu Club.
"All these are ideas at this stage but we will have definite plans and details ... within the next six months," Mr Smith said in a statement from Singapore yesterday. The Canggu Club, which has a large colonial-style club house as its centrepiece, is situated about 10 minutes' drive north of trendy Seminyak and Mr Smith said there would be a big push to attract non-members to some areas of the revamped facility.
The Canggu Club's purchase price was undisclosed and the vendors were a group of expats.
The Smiths will continue to manage their other Semarang resort at Uluwatu on Bali's Bukit peninsula, where beauty queen Jennifer Hawkins was recently married.
Bali is increasingly a magnet for Australian developers and hoteliers. One of Australia's largest hoteliers, Mantra, is also keen on the Indonesian island and is in due diligence to purchase two resorts in Seminyak for more than $10m.
Mantra plans to manage a further two Balinese resorts.
Mr Smith started accommodation provider BreakFree Resorts and Holidays in the 1990s.
He later sold the business to MFS. In 2008 he was developing what was billed as Australia's most expensive beach house - a $60m edifice on the the Gold Coast's Hedges Avenue.
But, like others, Mr Smith was caught up in the $3 billion collapse of MFS.



Source: theasutralian.co.au