Want to join Australia’s first $24,000-a-year private car racing club?

The resort, 140 kilometres north of Sydney, is the creation of property developer Richard Gillis and marketer and motorsport enthusiast Tony Palmer. The concept is new to Australia, but well understood in Europe, where ski resorts that cater to members and the wider public are common.

Explaining how it will work was the biggest challenge, Palmer said.

“You’re dealing with the disbelief of people,” he told The Australian Financial Review. “Years of work has gone into modelling this.”

It’s not just theoretical. The low-profile Gillis has experience in regional development and is separately bringing back to life the 7256-square-metre Central Hotel site in Moss Vale in the NSW Southern Highlands.

He and Palmer have already invested $20 million into what they estimate will be a $150 million construction budget to prepare the site they took over in 2019, and design and build the 30-metre-wide dirt track now on the site.

Fans are responding. A promotional event on Tuesday this week led to 16 people signing up as members, bringing the total in three weeks to 94. They have already exchanged off-the-plan contracts with buyers of 12 of the villas costing $3 million.

And last week Metrics Credit Partners, the $22 billion fund manager and private creditor provider, signed a debt funding agreement that will allow them to tar the track – a complex process, putting down seven layers of material, including three separate layers of asphalt – and build the commercial and residential property assets.

It took a while to find a funder who would understand the project and its risks, Palmer said.

“Because we were both the operating business and the developer, it makes for a fairly unique conversation,” he said. “We’re looking at a valuation as a going concern as well as a property development.”

Metrics, which is now also running restaurant operator Rockpool and a residential development project in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, declined to comment.

The site has been a long time coming. The former mine, which opened in 1851, closed in 1970 after the outbreak of an underground fire that burned for 30 years. After an extensive rehabilitation process, the resort operators, who paid mine operator Yancoal an undisclosed sum for their 263 hectare site, got the sign-off from authorities in 2023 to begin construction.

The first stage of completion of the resort, due for June next year, will be a 3.8-kilometre, partially completed but still usable sealed track, along with pit and garage facilities that will allow the resort to start selling services and not just making money off its property assets, Palmer said.

Juggling the three different revenue streams the business is counting on is a challenge.

“The track is a bit like a hotel,” Palmer said. “You have a very finite set of inventory. There are only 365 days a year you can operate and only so many daylight hours to operate. Who’s going to use it in those hours?”

Members paying the hefty membership fee – at $26,400 including GST still less than a set of rims for a Porsche GT3RS – will use the facilities to drive, maintain and even store – their expensive vehicles.

In addition, the resort will lease space and facilities to car manufacturers who will want to use it for corporate and promotional events. It will also be open to a car-loving public.

“As exclusive as it sounds, accessibility is also very important,” Palmer said.

“Every weekend, hundreds, if not thousands, of enthusiasts drive up the Old Pacific Highway, meet in the Bunnings or the Maccas on the highway, have a coffee, meet and drive home,” he said.

“We want this to be the place on Saturday mornings where they can come and have a coffee, a bacon-and-egg roll and be part of the atmosphere. They don’t have to drive on the track. They can hang out with like-minded individuals.”

It will not be a boys’ club, he cautioned, saying children would be able to learn to drive go-carts and teenagers could learn to drive at the resort.

The local council is keen for the project to go ahead.

“This facility will be an enormous boost for Lake Macquarie, generating jobs and flow-on revenue from the motorsport enthusiasts who will converge on our city from across Australia and abroad,” Lake Macquarie deputy mayor Jack Antcliff said in December.

Palmer is expecting a pick-up in demand once the tarring of the track, due to start in February, after all drainage and site preparation is complete, gets done.