Former Brisbane refinery to be transformed into $250m business park

CONSTRUCTION is set to start on transforming a former Brisbane refinery into a $250 million business park.

BMI Group's Colmslie Business Park is set to transform a former Mobil refinery site.

A DEVELOPER with a history of tackling difficult projects will next month start construction of the first stage of a southside business park.

Over the past three years BMI Group has remediated and completed civil works on the first two stages of the $250 million Colmslie Business Park on the corner of Lytton and Colmslie roads in Morningside.

A former Mobil refinery, the 27.5ha site took over a decade to find a buyer able to take on the work needed to ensure property was market ready.

Earlier this year BMI also purchased an adjoining 2.4ha site on the river which has a Heritage-listed former Hans Continental Smallgoods factory.

BMI development manager Michael Irvine said unlike other developers BMI has a resource recovery arm.

“We have a successful track record of dealing with what some consider difficult sites,” he said.

“The former refinery site was on the Contaminated Land Register and Mobil spent considerable resources to enable it to be removed from the CLR to the EMR (Environment Management Review).

“Over the past 18 months we’ve successfully remediated 70,000sq m of soil from the EMR with a further 30,000sq m to be removed later this year.”

Mr Irvine said demand for the business park has been very strong with the construction of Stage 1 of the development — a trade centre and service station — to start by the end of the year.

In Stage 2 all 14 lots have been sold to mostly owner-occupiers. Sources say prices ranged between $550/sq m and $620/sq m.

CBRE’s Peter Turnbull and Ben Lyons and JLL Aaron Bates and Brendan Delahunty marketed Stage 2. Stage 3 is expected to be released at the start of next year.

Mr Turnbull said he was “happily surprised” with the demand for Stage 2.

“In this area there’s always been strong demand but a lack of available land,” he said.

“I think the really good pricing reflected this supply-demand issue.”

Mr Irvine said the addition of the waterfront land and heritage-listed Hans building will give the Colmslie Business Park the potential to become Brisbane’s premier industrial estate.

“The idea is to work with council to create a hub that will not only provide amenity to the industrial estate but also to activate the heritage precinct to the public,” he said.