ApartmentsLeon Della BoscaTue 25 Aug 26
Approval Completes Brisbane Waterfront Tower Hat-Trick for Graya
Graya’s 15-storey Silk apartment tower has been greenlit to rise on a site on the Brisbane River at St Lucia, its third waterfront scheme to move ahead in 18 months.
The Brisbane City Council has now approved the application for the 810sq m parcel at 16-18 Sandford Street on a bend of the Brisbane River with a northerly aspect over Orleigh Park toward the CBD skyline.
Graya will be designer and builder on the project that comprises 16 split-floor and six full-floor homes, including a double-level penthouse with a reported price tag near $20 million.
Plans filed with the city detailed eight two-bedroom and 14 three-bedroom apartments above four basement levels.
The scheme includes about 600sq m of communal space across the ground and rooftop levels that will include a gym, pool, plunge pool, dining areas, lounges and wellness zones overlooking the river corridor.
Graya co-founder and chief executive Rob Gray said genuine riverfront sites in the suburb were close to exhausted, positioning Silk as part of a shift toward lower-density, owner-occupier apartment stock at St Lucia.
“St Lucia is one of those suburbs people do not want to leave,” Gray said. “They know the river, the trees, UQ, the golf course, Toowong and Indooroopilly, and that familiarity is hard to replace. True riverfront opportunities here are exceptionally scarce.”
The application was filed in March and assessed at a code level, meaning it fell within height and density already considered for the site under Brisbane City Plan 2014’s High Density Residential zone, so public notification was not required.
Graya acquired the amalgamated site from the Malouf family for $17 million a week into a five-week expressions-of-interest campaign run by RWC Queensland.
Co-founder and managing director Andrew Gray said the approval “removes a substantial layer of execution risk” given the site’s fundamentals.
Graya recently completed ARC at Toowong on the same stretch of river, as the builder for developer Spyre Group, giving it recent experience with comparable riverside construction conditions.
Silk is the third waterfront project Graya has progressed in 18 months, adding to a pipeline that now exceeds $2 billion across Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Byron Bay.
Its wider portfolio includes Enclave, which banked $80 million in sales after a soft launch last year; The Gallery, now under construction with an estimated completion in 2028; and Ripple, approved in March 2023.
At Newstead, a $40-million off-market deal last month paved the way for The Silo, a 170-home, 35-storey tower designed by Bureau Proberts, with an expected $700 million in gross revenue.
And on the Gold Coast, a triple-block consolidation at Jefferson Lane, Palm Beach that cost Graya $35.5 million is the site for a proposed project dubbed Coral, a 16-apartment, nine-storey Koichi Takada-designed scheme worth more than $100 million.
