Luxury riverside towers to be built at former athletes village site
Luxury towers expected to house up to 5000 people will be erected on a riverside block previously slated for the Olympic athletes village in Hamilton.
Deputy premier Jarrod Bleijie announced the project, that will be handled by five separate developers, on Sunday – the latest in his spree of announcements about the sell-off of underutilised state-owned land.
The six-hectare block will be split between five separate developers, with the 13 towers expected to deliver 2200 apartments ranging from one to four bedrooms.
A shopping centre, hotel, childcare facility and medical services will also be built as part of the development between Wharf and Theodore streets.
Towers closer to the water will be built by Red & Co, Joe Adsett Developments and Graya, while those further back will be developed by Lancini and Greyburn.
All three of the riverfront towers will contain housing and retail spaces, with the Graya building to also have a 50-bed hotel.
The Lancini building will be the centre of the development, with a 15,000-square-metre shopping centre with a supermarket and space for potential medical, child care and educational services.
Greyburn will develop four medium-height complexes with ground floor retail.
The state will spend $154 million over the next year-and-a-half on road upgrades and preparing the sites, with work expected to begin in 2028.
Bleijie said Wharf Street would be extended to stretch further along the water, with community lawns and shade, with renders showing walking and bike infrastructure along the river.
However, the deputy premier would not be drawn on why the state should spend the money on upgrades or whether any of the five developers would be footing the bill for core infrastructure such as sewerage.
“That’s for [Economic Development Queensland] now that they’ve got to finalise the contract negotiations, we’re announcing today the five preferred proponents,” he said.
Similarly, he refused to answer how much the developers would pay for the prime riverfront land, citing that contracts were yet to be signed.
Asked if the state had enough construction workers to build these towers alongside the other recently approved major projects, including Olympic infrastructure, Bleijie said the state needed more migrants.
“We will be working to the federal government absolutely for skilled migrants,” he said.
“I see a big immigration debate federally at the moment, but the reality is, the developers and builders and construction companies in Queensland need skilled migration to cater for the lack of builders we have in the future.
Bleijie said there was $119 billion dollars worth of work in the state’s capital pipeline for the next four years.
While the hope is these towers will be completed by 2032, Bleijie did not promise that would be the case.
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