Consolidated Properties Group Breaks Ground on $450m Monarch

The sun was shining as shovels hit dirt on Brisbane’s latest luxury riverfront development, the $450-million Monarch. 

Ten years after they first teamed up to deliver Spire in the Brisbane city, Consolidated Properties Group, Hutchinsons Builders, Qualitas, John Wardle Architects and Cottee Parker have collaborated again, this time to create Monarch, on the former ABC site at Toowong.

Consolidated Properties Group chief executive Don O’Rorke said it was the best residential development site in Brisbane and the market agrees.

“We’ve sold half of the development in just two months,” O’Rorke said.

“We’re really excited to be commencing construction off the back of an unbelievably successful sales campaign. And we are honouring the past by restoring Middenbury House, which will soon be open to the public for the first time in more than a century.

“With a planned Toowong-to-West-End Green Bridge at the entry to our new 3000sq m riverfront parkland, Monarch Residences really is the missing piece of the puzzle for riverfront living in Brisbane.

“Hutchies has started construction and will be finished by Christmas 2025.”

▲ Qualitas’s Rohan Davis, Hutchies chairman Scott Hutchinson and CPG chief executive Don O'Rorke break ground on the $450-million apartment project.

CPG has banked 110 sales worth $160 million with Scott Hutchinson and Jack Hutchinson Jnr buying into the project. O’Rorke said the purchasers were largely from the western suburbs. 

While diggers got to work in the background Hutchinson Builders chairman Scott Hutchinson said he was pleased to be taking on the luxury residential project, with long-time friend and collaborator Don O’Rorke.

“I’m loath to stop those machines,” Hutchinson said over the din, “given Don’s ironclad guarantee of Christmas 2025—we need every day.

“The scale of Monarch Residences means we will have the opportunity to provide work to hundreds of people in a variety of trades through to anticipated completion in late 2025.

“The early sales success of the project is testament to the reputation of Consolidated Properties Group and the skill of Wardle and Cottee Parker Architects, and with more than a century of building experience under our belts, we are confident we can bring the vision for Monarch to life.”

Consolidated Properties Group is delivering the 224-apartment project across two buildings on the 1.2ha site with funding partner Qualitas. 

The developer bought the Monarch site at 600 Coronation Drive for $43.5 million from Sunland in March 2021 and won approval for the two-tower project in mid-2022. 

Monarch’s one, two, three and four bedroom apartments are priced from $645,000, with penthouses priced from $4.15 million.