Freeform Wins VCAT Approval for $100m Tullamarine Estate

Freeform has won planning approval for its $100-million Brookside Tullamarine industrial estate in what is understood to be the first Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) ruling to apply the state’s tougher waterway controls to a Steele Creek site. The staged project at 22 Steele Court, 13km north-west of the Melbourne CBD, will ultimately comprise 100 office-warehouses and 34 storage-studios. Construction is expected to start in early 2027. Brookside follows Freeform’s first project, the $65.5-million Citadel Business Park at 85 Wright Road in Keilor Park. Bounded on two sides by the confluence of Steele Creek and Steele Creek North, the Tullamarine site has more than 300m of creek frontage. Steep topography, floodplain constraints, protected biodiversity and a residential interface across the water added further layers of complexity. “This is by far the most complex site and planning context we’ve undertaken,” Freeform director Tim Kourtaibe told The Urban Developer . When the application was lodged, a discretionary 30m waterway setback applied. Most of the design sat well beyond that line, but built form encroached inside it at one point. Kourtaibe said Melbourne Water signalled it was open to discretion on that section, but its technical queries could not be resolved within the assessment timeframe. Brimbank City Council refused the application in late November 2025. An application for review went to VCAT on December 17, 2025. Six days later, the state government gazetted Amendment VC278, which applied new Significant Landscape Overlays to 17 metropolitan waterways, including Steele Creek, and lifted the minimum waterway setback in state planning policy from 30m to 50 metres. ▲ Freeform director Tim Kourtaibe said the approval “reaffirms the direction I intend to continue in with Freeform”. “The proceeding then continued under a materially tougher framework than the one the council had originally assessed against,” Kourtaibe said. Working with planning, landscape, architecture, civil engineering, biodiversity and legal consultants, Freeform refined the design with Melbourne Water, which withdrew its objection subject to agreed conditions at a compulsory conference in April this year. Council held its position, and the matter went to a three-day hearing in May, with Friends of Steele Creek joining as an objector. VCAT found most existing developments along this reach of the creek backed on to the corridor, leaving the waterway degraded. In its reasons, the tribunal accepted expert evidence that a design engaging with the creek was preferable to a literal application of the new setback. Its decision stated that the estate would deliver “a better landscape and environmental outcome for the waterway corridor” than the existing condition and praised the architecture for “a degree of design resolution more akin to a high quality commercial or residential development”. Under the approved scheme, built form would sit 30m from the top of bank at that single point, with most of it close to or at 50 metres. ▲ Landscape architect Jack Merlo’s plans would bring indigenous planting and habitat creation to more than 300m of Steele Creek frontage. Designed by M3 Architects, the estate takes a landscape-led approach, with Jack Merlo, in his first industrial appointment, planning canopy trees and indigenous species along the full creek frontage. “On this site, the extensive creek interface was both a significant and complex planning hurdle but also posed the single most differentiating opportunity,” Kourtaibe said. Sloping land also allowed Freeform to lift yield and gross floor area while keeping natural light and functionality across the site, which helped offset the cost of the landscaping. “Will Brookside achieve higher sales rates than a run-of-the-mill warehouse in a nearby street? Almost certainly. But whether that’s attributable to the landscape design, the internal specifications, the city views, or the communal amenity is impossible to quantify,” Kourtaibe said. Pricing is balanced against sales velocity, with structured price increases used to taper the rate of sales while keeping the project feasible. “We could immediately hold out for the price ceiling, but our sales velocity might be one sale per month,” he said. “You simply don’t have that long on a project of scale.” ▲ On Citadel Business Park, Kourtaibe said “most industrial product is a commodity [but] we’re building something that moves beyond that”. Melbourne Airport and the Western Ring Road are minutes away, and the proposed Airport Rail Link station at Keilor East is a few hundred metres from the site. The mix of warehouse formats caters for owner-occupiers and SMEs through to larger logistics and trade businesses. “We knew from the outset there was an incredible opportunity to create something special here, but it would take balancing competing planning policy objectives, environmental sensitivity and creative engineering solutions to make it all work,” Kourtaibe said. “I don’t believe there has been an offering like this in Melbourne’s industrial market to date.” Kourtaibe founded the company in 2024, and it already reports a pipeline worth more than $150 million. Tim Kourtaibe joins The Deal with Adam Di Marco podcast this week.

Industrial
Leon Della Bosca
Thu 01 Oct 26

Freeform Wins VCAT Approval for $100m Tullamarine Estate

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