The company, which has just tied up a major venture in Sydney, is cantering toward the development starting gates at the Hope Island Resort, where it bought control of The Links golf course and clubhouse in 2013.

Golden Horse also nabbed two development sites near the clubhouse and it’s been diligently working through plans for the land.

Those plans include a hotel, something which was a prerequisite for the resort when it was built in the late ’80s and given integrated tourism resort status by the Foreign Investment Review Board.

The hotel, after economic setbacks and multiple changes in the resort’s ownership, never looked like becoming a reality until Golden Horse galloped on to the scene in 2013.

Executive chairman Feng Di, when Golden Horse’s Hope Island deal was finalised, wasted no time making it clear a hotel would be built and that it would match the five-star standard of a hotel at a championship golf course the company owns outside Guangzhou in China.

By all accounts, the first signs of the hotel coming out of the ground at the resort will be seen early in 2017.

It’s likely the hotel will have close to 200 rooms — not the 400 previously suggested by observers — and include serviced apartments.

Golden Horse also is mooting nearly 30 waterfront townhouses and a very up-market day spa overlooking the resort’s Lake Lugano.

The group, which spent more than $14 million on its initial Hope Island Resort buys, also owns the Noosa Springs course, and has bought a development site at Milton in Brisbane and launched a 20-level apartment tower, Icon.

The Hong Kong-based group has even bigger fish to fry in the southern capital of Sydney. Only last month it stitched up a partnership with Shanghai-listed group Greenland to develop a $380 million site at Erskineville.

The Ashmore Estate, a $1.6 billion project, will include up to 1600 apartments.

Meanwhile, it’s evident that chairman Feng Di’s Hope Island appetite wasn’t satisfied solely by his golf purchases.

He took a fancy to one of the residential areas at the Japanese-built resort and bought two five-bedroom houses in the same street.

He also, via company Noosa Springs Golf Club, picked up a large waterfront housing site in another street.

The three purchases came to $7.21 million all up, taking the Golden Horse-Feng spend at the resort past $20 million.

That figure will soar once the hotel is completed.