Developer’s plans could cut out council for golf course resort, housing approval
The developer behind the proposal for a five-star hotel, industrial park and housing on rural land south-east of Brisbane has laid out plans that could bypass council and see a state-sanctioned development area established.
Stephen Williams, best known for Riverlink in Ipswich and West Village in inner-Brisbane’s West End, says he is confident the state will add the land in Mount Cotton to the urban footprint and declare it a priority development area, paving the way for major changes.
The land, largely comprising chicken farms and a winery, is in the Redland City Council area, which voted to support an investigation to include the area in the urban footprint earlier this year.
Williams said he had initially been working with chicken farm owners Darwalla and Golden Cockerel, who were seeking a new use for their land as they planned to move their operations further away from the expanding Redlands population.
“The reason that opportunity came up is because of the avian flu risk for having chickens in the Redlands area, and the impact that could have on the activities of Golden Cockerel,” Williams said.
Other landholders represented by Williams include local newspaperman and developer Warren Pryde and the Morris family, who own the nearby Sirromet Winery.
Williams said he was confident applications currently with the state planner and Economic Development Queensland would result in the area being included in the urban footprint and deemed a PDA, which would enable the state to decide what happens on the land, not the council.
The entire urban footprint of south-east Queensland is currently under review, with a draft plan expected by the end of the year.
Should he get his way, Williams said he hoped to move fast.
“We have the ambition to meet some of the missing accommodation needs that are likely before the Olympic Games in 2032,” he said.
Under the plan, Sirromet would be transformed from a winery and events space with glamping facilities to a 250-room resort, complete with an 18-hole golf course, conference rooms and permanent villas.
A masterplan seen by this masthead also includes a wellness centre, an expansion of the glamping facilities, horticultural gardens, a solar farm, and a wastewater treatment plant.
Williams said it was business as usual at the winery for now, but that would be the first part of the plan to go ahead.
The winery would connect the area to the already approved Southern Thornlands PDA. The southern end, made up of land owned by the chicken companies and pegged for a “technology park” and district centre that would include shops and condensed residential housing, would almost hug the already developed part of Mount Cotton.
Between them is the land owned by Pryde and quarry owner Dick Karreman, who is on the project but represented by local developer Fiteni, Williams said.
In Williams’ plan, this section, and part of a block owned by Golden Cockerel, would be residential blocks, roughly 20 per hectare.
But the council does not support more suburban development, and called for it to be excluded from the plan when it voted to support the area being investigated.
Councillor Rowanne McKenzie, who brought the motion forward, said this was because the council already relied too heavily on household rates.
“Approximately 90 per cent of council’s rate revenue is derived from residential properties, creating a heavy reliance on households to fund core services and infrastructure,” she said.
In its letter to the government supporting the investigation of the land, the council said any urban development should be linked to the delivery of the Coomera Connector.
Referred to as the second M1, the Coomera Connector is an alternative route to the clogged motorway between the northern Gold Coast and Loganholme, just south of Brisbane, which has been in the works since 2016. Its final stage will swoop through the Redlands, near the proposed development.
However, that section is only in the planning stage.
“We note that that’s council’s decision, but we don’t agree with that. We agree it would be an ideal position, but it’s not based on any real traffic justification,” Williams said, arguing that upgrades to local infrastructure would be sufficient.
While Williams said he was keen to work with the community and all levels of government, the council’s influence could be dashed by a PDA.
Should that happen, it would be the fourth PDA in the Redlands, where infrastructure like sewerage and roads are contentious subjects.
A past Fiteni-linked development took more than a decade to connect to the wastewater network, while other projects have led to localised traffic problems.
A council spokesperson said any work to core infrastructure would need to be covered by developers.
In turn, Williams said he and the landowners would foot the bill for any infrastructure upgrades needed for the development, including a duplication of parts of Mount Cotton Road and an upgrade to the Mount Cotton water treatment plant.
“We accept that we will have to pay 100 per cent of those costs,” he said.
“We have a strategy where we have sufficient land under our direct control that will allow us to discharge any treated effluent that we generate.”
That would differ from the 8000-home Southern Thornlands PDA, where a core infrastructure agreement has been struck between the state and federal governments.
The state said it was working through early feedback on the regional plan, and further public consultation would occur when a draft was released later this year.
Fiteni’s director was contacted for comment.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.
More:
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.