Prime sport club land could be solution to Brisbane’s affordable housing crisis

With Brisbane lagging behind other capitals in providing affordable housing, experts say the city needs to look at interstate examples of unlocking prime sporting-club land.

Building homes on properties already used by struggling suburban sporting clubs has emerged as a key solution for Brisbane’s housing crisis.

The state government is being called on to unlock prime land around community sporting venues to address the rippling lack of housing supply and provide a vital cash injection for iconic clubs.

Property Council Queensland executive director Jen Williams said there were a number of interstate examples where a variety of sporting clubs had benefited from development and the community had both retained fields and increased housing stock.

“There’s a whole heap of sporting communities around Brisbane that are in financial strife and sit on a lot of land,” Ms Williams said.

The Green Tarragindi Village manager Alison Fynes-Clinton welcomes new residents Trish and Tom Knobel and Erik (centre) and Robyn Roberts (right). Picture: Nigel Hallett

The lack of affordable housing has been identified as a key reason Brisbane is behind all other major Australian capital cities and cannot crack the top 10 in the world’s pre-eminent liveability rankings, compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The Courier-Mail and Sunday Mail’s Future Brisbane series this week focuses on liveability, and addresses key areas the River City needs to fix to climb up the world rankings including housing, transport, culture and climate.

Ms Williams said clubs were typically on land zoned as sport and recreational, which presented a barrier to development and “has meant these sporting clubs have gone backwards”.

Development of Perth football club, Claremont, has been hailed as a great use of under-utilised space.

Ms Williams said the development of the Tarragindi Bowls Club was a “great example”, where a fledgling sporting group had been revitalised due to the development of a retirement community surrounding the facility.

She said there were also numerous examples interstate of AFL fields with mixed-density housing built around the grounds while the fields themselves had been retained and improved.

“That community then gets to use the sporting field as their backyard and because the community is driving it and involved in it, things like density become less of an issue because they see the benefit returned back to them,” Ms Williams said.

“But it’s going to take a fundamental change of public and government perceptions around sporting lands and the sanctity of keeping them as is.

Property Council Queensland executive director Jen Williams.

“It ticks all the boxes, whether it’s youth crime, getting them involved in sports; health in sports in terms of the Olympic Games; and then housing and community as well.”

Ms Williams said the proposal had been adopted in capital cities across the country and was a genuine option as the Queensland government searched for underused land to ease the affordability and availability crisis forcing Queenslanders into homelessness.

The WA government invested $16m into a site home to Perth-based football club Claremont, where an underused facility was transformed into a sporting precinct flanked by 750 new homes.

The transformation provided a spacious backyard for hundreds of residents while revitalising an iconic sports club.

The SA Jockey Club’s planned Morphetville development. Picture: Supplied

In Adelaide, an expansive site home to the Morphettville turf club was rezoned to allow the South Australian Jockey Club to redevelop 7.5ha of underused land to build 150 apartments and 250 townhouses.

The five-year masterplan has been applauded for providing housing options, creating a new commercial precinct and allocating much-needed cash for the club.

Meanwhile, another SA example is the transformation of Adelaide’s former stadium, Football Park at West Lakes, into a mixed-use development with 1600 new homes through townhouses and apartments.

The stadium was once filled with tens of thousands of screaming fans for AFL matches but with the two local AFL teams’ move to Adelaide Oval, the stands have been demolished to make way for a variety of housing, retail and hospitality.

Melbourne’s former AFL ground Waverley Park, where Hawthorn is based, has undergone a similar redevelopment.

The transformation of Adelaide’s former football stadium, Football Park, into a mixed-use development with 1600 new homes through townhouses and apartments.

Deputy Premier and Planning Minister Steven Miles said feedback from industry stakeholders such as the Property Council was key to increasing much-needed housing supply.

“The Palaszczuk government is working to pull every lever to see more homes built in good, well-connected locations,” he said.

“We’re using the opportunities in the lead up to Brisbane 2032 to leverage development to deliver the homes and infrastructure our growing state needs.”

Mr Miles said the priority development area at Woolloongabba, which The Courier-Mail can reveal is now open for community consultation, is another example of work under way near sporting infrastructure.

“We will continue to work with stakeholders, industry, and community to find unique ways to increase housing supply across the state,” he said.

Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/Courier Mail

Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner said council’s suburban renewal precinct plan was already aiming to unlock underused land by reimagining industrial and commercial sites across Brisbane.

He said 70ha of land had already been identified for development, including a former paint factory, metal fabricator, brickworks and baked goods manufacturer.

“We need to look for opportunities to accommodate people in sensible and sustainable ways without destroying our liveability,” he said.

“I want Brisbane to have housing choices and opportunities, and be a place where you can have a backyard or you can live in an apartment.

“There is untapped housing supply in some of our under-utilised industrial precincts and we’ve already identified more than a dozen sites with potential.

“These are sites like leftover car yards, former warehouses or unsightly old shops that can be a blight on our suburbs.”