Developers, Funding Partners Sought for New Maroochydore CBD

Top-tier development and investment firms are being targeted to partner with SunCentral Maroochydore in one of Queensland’s largest urban regeneration projects.

Sunshine Coast Council-owned SunCentral Maroochydore Pty Ltd is charged with designing and delivering the new CBD at Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast.

SunCentral has launched an invitation for expressions of interest (EOI) campaign for more than 15 hectares of pre-approved developable land.

SunCentral Maroochydore chief executive John Knaggs said the city-making company was seeking experienced urban development entities to partner in the next stages of the new masterplanned city centre.

“This is an opportunity for top-tier developers and institutional capital groups to enter into a long-term partnership with SunCentral Maroochydore and set a new benchmark for urban development in one of the fastest growing regions in the country,” Knaggs said.

Related: First Look at Sunshine Coast’s New $430m CBD

Knaggs said an earlier EOI for individual lots within the CBD’s core commercial precinct had attracted a range of local, national and international interest, with a number of submissions under contract or commercial negotiations.

“For this next stage EOI, which deals with the balance of land within the city centre, larger scale, precincts-wide approaches are on offer.”

The EOI campaign offers 67,500sq m of commercial space and 25,900sq m of retail floorspace along with 1,390 residential apartments across a number of precincts in the new city centre.

“Some of this development opportunity is located in the core commercial precinct while the majority is to the south of the main Corso waterway of the new city centre, adjacent to the designated transit plaza and in mixed-use apartment precincts alongside waterways and parkland,” Knaggs said.

As well as an international sub-sea broadband cable that will offer unprecedented data connectivity for businesses in the new CBD, more than $10 million in underground telecommunications and services capacity has already been installed beneath the city centre’s new streets.

The CBD will be critical to help manage growth in the region with more than $12.5 billion in new public and private investment either committed or in the pipeline, including the expansion of the Sunshine Coast International Airport which is expected to have direct flights to Asia and the United States from 2021.

With the Sunshine Coast tipped to be home to 500,000 people by 2036, the site of the new Maroochydore CBD has been declared a priority development area (PDA) by the state government.

This status allows for streamlined planning, approval and development processes.

Knaggs said independent assessors estimated the new CBD would create more than 15,000 permanent jobs on the Sunshine Coast and the construction component of the Maroochydore City Centre was likely to generate $5.9 billion in output and $2.3 billion in value add to the Queensland economy over the project’s 15 to 20-year life.

The new city centre is taking shape with the stage one civil works completed and construction of the first building commencing this year in the form of the $30 million Foundation Place project — an eight-storey office building by Evans Long.

The Habitat Development Group will follow with its $83 million Market Lane Residences project containing 152 apartments.

Submissions to the invitation for expressions of interest open on 16 May 2019. Click here for more information.

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