I’ve been curious about this place since I first saw it for myself – a giant pink mansion on the top of a hill in St Lucia. Only today did I begin to look into its history. This post is my attempt to pull together what is known about the “Pink Palace”.

1. Origins

The land itself was previously part of Sir John Beals Chandler’s estate. Sir John was the founder of the electronics retailer Chandler’s (which appears to now be Betta Electrical), radio station 4BC and later the Lord Mayor of Brisbane. He is the namesake of the suburb Chandler and the Sir John Chandler Park.

Sometime after Sir John’s death in 1962, the property was acquired by Noel Kratzmann, a local property developer who built the mansion, a 6-year project. He died on 23 February 1989, shortly before his family’s planned move to the property.

2. Lost years

I cannot find anything more about this mansion until the early 2000’s. My assumption is that the family held onto the mansion during that time – the family company NA Kratzmann & Sons owns the Toowong Private Hospital (a psychiatric facility that Noel developed and chaired until his death). The next piece of information I found was a sale notice dated 29 September 2001.

3. Rise and fall of a porn king

The house was then owned by Greg Shiraz Lasrado, who bought it for $5.35m. Mr Lasrado made millions in the 90s riding the wave of internet porn subscriptions (and there was some interest in his shady spamming from the FTC). Apparently he was making hundreds of thousands per month and was worth some $60m at his peak. Things went south with his relationships, he did as porn kings do and ended up doing a lot of heroin, drove his black Lamborghini Diablo (licence plate “INSANE”) like a madman and, in February 2005, apparently under the influence of a prescription medication he hit (and flipped) another car on the freeway. He was convicted of “dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm while under the influence of a prescription drug” on 12 December 2008 and sentenced to two years in jail. He was also convicted of heroin possession, and was apparently doing $4500 of the stuff daily. The ATO were after him for $5 million or so in unpaid taxes, which are presumably still unpaid seeing as he’s supposed to be totally broke. Someone has pulled together a lot of info on Mr Lasrado, which makes for an interesting read. He liked to party, although I am a tad sceptical of the rumoured guests, including Elton John, Cher, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel.

4. New owners and mystery fire

Lasrado sold the place on 28 June 2005 to property developer and socialite Cindy Fleming for a cool $7m. The day before settlement, the “Winter House”, one of the two buildings off the main residence caught fire, in what Lasrado believes was arson. Things go quiet for a while as the family settle in to the new property. They removed the pink carpet and pink curtains. In March 2013, it was up for sale again, with an auction planned for the 27th. That must have fallen through, because they hadn’t sold it by 3 September 2014, when Cindy died suddenly of an asthma attack, leaving no will. The house was then part of an estate dispute between Cindy’s widower, Michael Conley and her previous de facto partner John James (who apparently paid for her funeral and wake at Cloudland, an incredibly fancy nightclub in Fortitude Valley).

5. Sold to developers

In late May 2015, the site was acquired by Sunland [PDF] , a property developer, who plan to develop the 14 residential blocks into 28 luxury residences. I’m quite interested in what is to become of this to be honest, given the rather interesting past of the place. It’s a shame to think it will be knocked down and lost, given its iconic status and strange history.