Inside new plans to expand Tom Grady Rural Merchandise Store

The transformation of an inner Gympie commercial precinct is expected to be escalated by plans for a significant development at one of the biggest and oldest businesses on the street. See the plans here:

New plans have been unveiled to further expand the Tom Grady Rural Merchandise Store at Tozer St, including a new building and covered car park.

Rural business stalwart Tom Grady’s footprint in Gympie is likely to expand further with plans unveiled to add to his prosperous rural merchandise store on Tozer Street, just up the road from the Mary Valley Rattler.

A new application lodged with Gympie Regional Council has revealed plans to construct a new building with an office and drive through service on the 1.5ha property.

More parking spaces in a covered area will be included as part of the expansion.

If approved it will the latest addition to the rural services offered at the property, which served as a butter factory from 1925 to 1978 until that part of the factory was shut down.

Rural goods were already being sold from the building before this closure.

The Tom Grady building will be the latest addition to the business operating out of the region’s old butter factory, after an unused gully next to the building was filled in to improve storage space and customer access.

This trend has continued through companies including Dairy Farmers before it was taken over by Tozer Street Properties, which bought the land in 2016 for $1.4m according to CoreLogic RP data records.

It is now serving as a second location for Tom Grady Rural Merchandise in Gympie, which has another base at Nash St and real estate shop front in Mary Street.

The development application says the Tozer Street block has been tied to the region’s rural industry for 110 years, and once included its own railway siding.

In 2020, the property was upgraded with 55,000 tonnes of soil used to fill in an unused gully to expand storage space and customer access.