How Brisbane’s West Village Won Over the River City

Deep in the eclectic tin-and-timber heart of Brisbane’s inner-city West End, the odds were always going to be stacked against such a large-scale development that pushed prevailing planning limits. And then, those odds suddenly got much worse. Nobody could have foreseen that one of the most tumultuous periods for the city’s development sector was coming. But what a difference a decade makes. What could easily have become a casualty of dogged community resistance, pandemic uncertainty and budget blowouts due to cost escalations and delays is now lauded as a visionary benchmark in transformative urban renewal. West Village—a bustling mixed-use precinct anchoring a cluster of eight residential towers—is now in its final stage. Overall, the development spans a prime 2.6ha patch occupied by the disused heritage-listed Peters’ Ice Cream Factory that provides a landmark centrepiece for the masterplan’s almost 1000 apartments as well as 18,000sq m of retail and 8000sq m of commercial space. That the $1.2-billion project came out of the ground at all is testament to the resilience, perseverance and resources of developer Sekisui House, which doubled down on its commitment to deliver its ambitious vision. Project director Taku Hashimoto concedes the company’s flagship Queensland project has been “a bit of a journey”. “But that is always the critical thing for us, to make sure that we deliver,” he says. “And when we’re committed, we’re committed to deliver the best possible outcome to the community.” ▲ Project director Taku Hashimoto: West End has this special character and a very cultural element to it. Easier said than done, of course—particularly when from the get-go that same community is fiercely opposed to the development’s scale, height and density, viewing it as a threat to the vibe of the city’s beloved 4101 postcode. “At the very start we faced significant community opposition,” Hashimoto says. “West End has this special character and a very cultural element to it … and the local people had never seen this magnitude of development in the area. So they thought it was just going to be too much. “But we knew from our development experience with brownfield sites this great mix of retail, commercial and residential was going to work…[and] the special culture of West End was not going to be destroyed but would merge with it.” Convincing them otherwise, despite considerable community engagement, was compounded by the developer’s lack of a development track record in the River City. “We had no track record of doing this in Brisbane, only our reputation and success in Japan … and so the local people were very skeptical and it was very difficult to satisfy them that this was going to be a success without having built anything in this place before,” Hashimoto says. The Brisbane City Council granted preliminary approval to Sekisui’s West Village masterplan in May of 2016—albeit limiting building height to 15 storeys compared to the original proposal’s 25 storeys. But it was a short-lived breakthrough and within weeks the Queensland Government had intervened, announcing a call-in of the project in response to sustained community campaigning and concerns over the development’s scale and lack of green space. Finally, after another four months in limbo, the way forward for the project was cleared with then Deputy Premier and planning minister Jackie Trad giving it the green light subject to a number of conditions. Significantly, those conditions required 30 per cent of the site be dedicated to publicly-accessible open space, resulting in smaller building footprints allowing for a taller built form—including one tower rising up to 22 storeys. Sekisui’s delivery masterstroke was to construct “in one hit” four levels of basement parking and the podium across the entire site. Hashimoto says although it required a lot of investment upfront that strategy was “a key to the success of the project” as it enabled the publicly-accessible components—including its park, retail and dining precincts—to be opened and operating without disruption from other stages of construction. ▲ The pandemic threatened to scuttle the project. The decision to persist tested every tenet in Sekisui’s playbook. However, more challenges were on the not-too-distant horizon. The advent of the pandemic presented unprecedented hurdles threatening to derail the project. “That was a very difficult time for us,” Hashimoto says. “But we decided to keep going and not stop the development and it has turned out to be the right decision.” Nevertheless, it was a decision that tested every tenet in Sekisui’s playbook. Pandemic-induced cost escalations massively blew out the West Village budget—by “more than doubling” according to Hashimoto—and the project timeframe ballooned from an initial seven years, with completion now expected in May 2027 stretching it to almost 13 years. The financial weight of Sekisui—one of Japan’s biggest home builders—was crucial, injecting the extra equity to secure commercial confidence to push the project forward and achieve the long-term outcome. As well, some of the rising costs were offset by increasing prices in the Brisbane apartment market. Prices for the 96 units in the project’s final 14-storey Callista on Park tower range from $2.4 million to $9 million. Along the way, it also recouped $202 million through the sale in 2022 of the precinct’s retail component to fund manager Centuria Capital Group and Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC. Meanwhile, even as construction gained momentum, community resistance and skepticism to Sekisui’s vision persisted. But the turning point came about midway through the project as its publicly-accessible amenities were progressively delivered, creating a tangible connection to the surrounding area. “That’s really when people started realising the development’s positive impact,” Hashimoto says. “Now the foot traffic through the precinct is just huge.” ▲ The original Peters Ice Cream Factory at West End, built in 1928, was preserved for commercial and retail use as part of the village. Urban planning strategist Ross Elliott wryly observes: “It’s an extremely popular place and I suspect many of the original protesters—the West End traditionalists—are now some of those customers”. “The other thing is, when the protests were happening it was all about the height, the scale and the density,” he says. “But you don’t see anyone walking around West Village these days with their necks craned to the sky trying to count how many levels there are above them. No one cares. “I think people just sort of forget that sometimes the new stuff can actually be better than the sentimental attachment to what was there before. “And I challenge anyone to say they don’t admire the outcome of West Village. They’ve achieved a really good mix of uses in that precinct and restored life to the historic ice cream factory buildings. It’s a great renewal example.” The irony is, he says, if the developer had pursued the easier code-compliant solution it would have been “hugely underwhelming”. “The developers could have basically carpet bombed that entire site with smaller towers leaving minimal open space. But instead what they wanted to do was open up the site by going with the taller structures.” And according to Elliott, who also chairs Brisbane City Council’s Better Suburbs Initiative, the West End community’s unique culture is far from lost. “It’s quite a melting pot with remnants of its past and I don’t think West Village has taken away from that. “It’s already gone through a complete cycle of change since its days as a hub for smokestack industries and in 50 years it will be different again. It’s never going to be the same, no matter what happens. And I think people who resist that sort of change, they’re wishing a tumbleweeds future on these places.” In a nod to the perseverance of Sekisui House in achieving its vision, he says: “I think the chief requirement of development these days is incredible patience … because the rubbish you have to put up with is breathtaking. “Before anyone puts a spade in the ground it can be many years. I mean, the paperwork takes as long as the building work…but those that can persist finally get there.” Hutchinson Builders chairman Scott Hutchinson says the unvarnished reality is that West Village from a construction perspective has been “a tough job”. The longstanding private Queensland-based builder has delivered every stage of the precinct, including the refurbishment of the 1928-built Peters Ice Cream and Cone Factory buildings. ▲ Hutchinson Builders chairman Scott Hutchinson: From a construction perspective, West Village has been a tough job. “But it’s just the sort of work you don’t want to have in a sharply rising market … it’s hard to survive a 40 per cent increase in construction costs,” Hutchinson says. “We might have got into the black over the whole thing but it was pretty tough going.” Reflecting as the decade-long odyssey draws to a close, however, Hutchinson also takes pride in carrying on the company’s development legacy in West End. “Hutchies has been part of the suburb since the 1920s,” he says. “Our original office and yard was on Montague Road until 1966,’’ he says. “And we’ve also had a long history with the West Village site, having worked on extensions to the original Peters Ice Cream building back in the 1940s. “So it was great going back there and I think it’s been good for West End.” Hashimoto says teaming with Hutchinson Builders had proven to be “a great partnership throughout the journey” “Having one of Queensland’s most reliable builders on board gave us a lot of trust within the market and that was a critical thing for us in delivering on our committed outcomes on such a big site,” he says. As for heeding the wisdom of the old Japanese proverb “a wise man climbs Mount Fuji once, only a fool climbs it twice”—Hashimoto suggests it is case of never say never for Sekisui House. “In the current market these kinds of projects are getting more difficult to stack up,” he says. “We are still definitely looking for a mixed-use opportunity to do a similar quality urban renewal project in Brisbane…but I don’t know about the same size.”

How Brisbane’s West Village Won Over the River City

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