[+] Gold Coast’s Tide of Development Washes Over the West

The land-constrained Gold Coast has always been a city at risk of outgrowing itself. That fateful day is fast approaching. And beyond the city’s so-called green behind the gold, a wave of development is already quietly gathering momentum. The Gold Coast is going west. About 50km inland from the outer urban edges of the tower-strewn coastal strip, greenfield developers are heading to the crossroads of State Route 90 and the Mount Lindesay Highway. There, in the heart of Beaudesert—the land-rich gateway to the Scenic Rim’s rolling foothills of the Great Dividing Range—they are doing deals. Swathes of land surrounding the town have been changing hands, swooped on by major developers with a view to creating estates comprising thousands of affordable new detached homes. The big development push out and over the ranges has begun in earnest. Driving it is a housing demand overspill from the Gold Coast, a city scraping the bottom of the barrel of developable greenfield land within its physical limits. And there is no doubt it will continue to flow west and swell as a rising tide of home buyers are priced out of its market. “We’re seeing a lot of people, more than 60 per cent of our buyers, coming out of the Gold Coast,” veteran Queensland property figure and Spring Creek Land Corporation executive director Terry McKinnon says. ▲ Spring Creek Estate spans about 75ha on the edge of Beaudesert and will eventually have around 1100 homes. Top image by Stuart Groom, Hot Air Balloons “They can come here, buy a cheaper block of land, build a better quality of house here … and save $300,000 or $400,000.” On the doorstep of Beaudesert’s town centre, Spring Creek Estate is a multi-stage subdivision under development offering house-and-land packages priced from $695,000. Its masterplan spans about 75ha that will ultimately accommodate about 1100 detached new homes. To date, almost 200 homesites have been sold, with many houses already built across its initial stages. “I’ve always thought the timing was right but, to be honest, I’m amazed at the demand,” McKinnon says. “Our problem at the moment is that it’s exceeding the supply that we can produce.” Even with cost escalations of 32 per cent to the subdivision’s civil works in the past three years bumping up the estate’s prices, buyer demand has not diminished but strengthened. Of the 81 blocks in stages three and four released in December all but 20 were sold within four months. Overall project sales, McKinnon says, are about a year ahead of initial projections and he is “scrambling” to get new stages approved. Not surprisingly, other developers also have been positioning themselves to capitalise on Beaudesert’s emergence as the key source of affordable new housing within commutable distance of the Gold Coast. ▲ A render of townhouses planned for Jane Street, Beaudesert. ASX-listed home builder AV Jennings and Melbourne-based private developer Moremac Property Group are among the big players to have secured sizeable footholds in and around the town. Each of their sites also has been earmarked to yield about 1000 homesites. Close to McKinnon’s Spring Creek Estate, it is believed Queensland developer QM Properties also has strategically put its foot on a site for a subdivision. “These companies don’t do those sorts of things without having a good look at what’s going on,” he says. “They have already made the judgment call about what they think is ahead for Beaudesert and they see nothing but opportunity. “It’s a big country town that all of a sudden development has caught up with … but what I’m surprised about is that it has taken so long. “We’re only a relatively small Queensland-based developer in the scheme of things and were lucky we got in early. “It’s not a sleepy little town anymore … but so far it has managed to maintain its ruralness, for want of a better word. People still nod and say G’day as you walk down the street. “Eventually, however, there will be some undeniable change because people have to live somewhere. It can’t stay the same forever when you’re going to put 4000 blocks in there over the next 10 years.” Scenic Rim Mayor Tom Sharp says the surge in development in and around Beaudesert was likely to create significant infrastructure constraints. “That’s the big issue, making sure the development doesn’t go unabated without keeping up with the infrastructure and services requirement, the transport network being number one,” he says. ▲ St Mary’s Catholic Church at Beaudesert was dedicated in 1907. The town was settled in 1847 on Yugambeh lands. Clearly, there will be increased traffic volumes between the town and the Gold Coast along the Beaudesert-Nerang Road (State Route 90), the main east-west artery. And, of course, the 2032 Olympics will be coming to town with the Games’ rowing and canoeing events being staged at nearby Lake Wyaralong, bringing infrastructure benefits that will fast-track growth. At the last official count, Beaudesert’s population was nudging 15,000. South-east Queensland town planner David Ransom predicts Beaudesert will effectively become a “satellite city” of the Gold Coast in the not-too-distant future. Logically, he says, the Scenic Rim is the only area in which lower-density urban expansion can occur beyond the City of Gold Coast boundaries. “You can’t change the fact that we’ve got the ocean to the east, the NSW border to the south and other congested local government jurisdictions to the north,” the director of Gold Coast-based Zone Planning Group says. “And despite the inconvenient mountain ranges to the west, it can’t go in any other direction. It can only ever go west.” Ransom estimates the Gold Coast is likely to run out of land for detached housing within five years at current take-up rates. ▲ Once a city like the Gold Coast hits the edges the price of slab-on-ground housing will appreciate more than it is already, says planner Dave Ransom. And he argues more needs to be done “to squeeze every last bit of it out of the city before it needs to solely rely on land to its west to provide affordable housing”. “The answer is to expand the city on to the constraint-free land that we have left, consume that first as efficiently as we can, and compress other parts of the city,” he says. “That’ll bide us some time to do some proper planning.” Nevertheless, he concedes it is “kicking the can down the road”. The Gold Coast’s greenfield land will be exhausted sooner rather than later and there will be significant westward population growth. “You can’t stop it,” Ransom says. “Once a city like the Gold Coast hits the edges, which is what’s happening right now, and it completely runs out of greenfield supply, then the price of slab-on-ground housing will appreciate more than it is already. “And from that point forward, if you want an affordable slab-on-ground house anywhere near the Gold Coast, you’ll have to live outside the city … it’s just the force of economics.” Beaudesert—a 48-minute drive from Nerang along State Route 90—will be the city’s closest source of affordable land and housing. Given the Gold Coast is a major source of employment, Ransom says a lot of people with jobs that the city needs them to do—but who will no longer be able to afford to live there—will “trade off their own time and vehicle running costs, against the more affordable housing which is on offer”. “So, in the next 10, 15, 20 years, Beaudesert is going to grow into a big place,” he says. “Because inevitably people will choose to go out there. “Who knows? It could be on track for 100,000 people within 30 years. There’s a huge amount of land out there.” Indeed, having crunched the numbers, Ransom says the latest South East Queensland Regional Plan has “substantially undercooked” its projections that 9500 additional homes will be needed in the Scenic Rim area by 2046. “Local government boundaries don’t matter when you’re a purchaser looking for affordable housing,” he says. “They’re irrelevant. It’s really all about do you own a reliable car and are you willing to drive an hour to work and back. “That’s not uncommon in Sydney, Melbourne and a lot of other cities and people will do that.” McKinnon says he couldn’t agree more. “I always used to wonder when development was racing out towards places like Ripley [42km south-west of Brisbane], where there wasn’t much in the way of infrastructure, why a well-serviced town like Beaudesert with a hospital, schools, courthouse, emergency services, residential-care facilities, a library and supermarkets was getting bypassed,” he says. “Essentially, while the rest of south-east Queensland has been growing exponentially, it has sort of sat there in a time capsule. “For a long time the South East Queensland Regional Plan seemed to look at Beaudesert and just go, ‘Yeah, well, ho-hum we’ll get to that later’. “But I think the marketplace has got there before them … and once that development push starts it’s hard to turn it off.” No question, the Gold Coast and Beaudesert are both at a crossroads. 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Construction
Phil Bartsch
Mon 13 May 24

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