First look: Norwell Valley canefields to become 40,000 home lakeside suburb
A mammoth 40,000-home development will replace Gold Coast's last sugarcane fields, with 56 farmers agreeing to sell in the city's biggest-ever residential project. This is what’s planned.
Exclusive plans from the Norwell Valley project show how the dying canefields will become the city’s largest greenfields development, and one of the biggest in Queensland.
Rather than become a “wasteland” of abandoned farms, under a master plan several precincts will be created with a commercial sector featuring business parks rather than warehousing.
At its heart will a retail hub and modern town centre.
The housing lots are to include affordable homes along with low level units surrounding water parks for families.
In short, the Gold Coast’s northern canefields will be transformed into an environmental super suburb - the largest in the city’s history.
“It’s a whole blue-green regeneration of the site. It’s critical in getting community support. The Gold Coast community needs to know where you can live in the future,” a project insider said.
At a closed session briefing at full council on Monday, a super majority of councillors backed a recommendation to set up a fast track development pathway with the state government.
A working group of senior planners and technical officers will be established.
After meeting with the developers, planners and cane farmers, it can be revealed:
• the project across the next 30 years could produce more than 40,000 dwellings.
• the site covers 6000ha, and it is expected it will be broken into thirds — covering residential, commercial and green zones — it’s twice the size of Springfield at Ipswich.
• 56 farmers have signed up to sell their properties but the total number of land holdings including smaller lots could be 200. Cane farmers get the same return for each hectare.
• marathon consultation has occurred with canegrowers to convince them this was not another “pie in the sky” project in the north like the “Disneylands and airports” of the past.
• talks with council and the government will kick off next year with either new legislation to create a special suburb or the region becoming a priority development area (PDA).
• the start-up will be 2027 with those early activation areas to include business and residential zones closest the eastern side of the Pacific Motorway opposite the Yatala industrial estate.
The project managers believe one of the keys to a quick start would be a PDA including an affordable housing component to accommodate the growing Yatala workforce.
Canegrowers as a group approached Colliers in 2020 and the Leamac Property Group was selected as the preferred development partner a year later, forming the Norwell Valley Collective (NVC). They have spent “millions of dollars” on technical studies.
NVC director Craig Treasure said the decision by council to progress the Norwell Valley masterplan and to write to the Deputy Premier to create a working group recognised the enormous potential for Norwell to deliver a solution to the housing crisis.
Planning laws would enable homes and commercial areas to be delivered “within a few short years” with much more significant land opened up for families over the next decade.
“NVC believe a planning instrument such as a Priority Development Area would
ensure that the right infrastructure is delivered to support development, and that
environmental restoration is prioritised to transform working cane farms to parklands and
open space,” Mr Treasure said.
He said the NVC had amalgamated nearly 3000 hectares (7400 acres) of land
and was negotiating with several large landowners to add their land to the pool.
A PDA is considered the most likely planning option.
In Southport it has helped fast track development in the Coast’s CBD.
“The process we are looking to do is identifying with council and state the best legal process to start this development,” Mr Treasure said.
“It could be a new priority development area, we will consider all options. There could be some early release areas that would allow some industrial land for employment and some residential land, and to assist with the housing crisis as early as 2027.
“This is quite a remarkable opportunity. Most green field developments don’t have that existing infrastructure to leverage off. Here we have all that transport infrastructure down our western boundary, we will be able to supplement that.
“The other great thing with this precinct is we have great social infrastructure — schools, sports clubs — embedded right through the community. Rather than create that right from scratch, all we have to do is nurture what is here.”
Rocky Point Canegrowers Organisation chair Greg Zipf said farmers wanted to avoid what occurred in Nambour on the Sunshine Coast when their industry closed suddenly in 2003.
“What I saw after that I didn’t want to see it actually happen in this district, this community. Because it became a wasteland, there was no direction,” he said.
“We’ve got a golden opportunity. We’ve got a group of people here that are leading that project and prepared to work with the community and the farmers, which is something I’ve never seen before.
“The level of commitment with these people has been never experienced before. We have seen other proposals come and go, nothing like this.”
Deputy Mayor Mark Hammel, as area councillor, said the reality was the cane industry had collapsed.
“We now have a responsibility to work with farmers, not around them, to ensure whatever comes next is properly planned — not rushed, and not left to chance,” he said.
“The worst possible outcome would be for the industry to fail and for there to be no planning done in terms of what happens next for the farmers.”
Mr Hammel regards the master plan as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to support farming families to “transition out of cane with dignity” after 150 years of contributing to the community and economy.
As City planning chair, Mr Hammel cautioned that development in the cane fields on its own will not fix the city’s housing crisis.
“But it must form part of the broader strategy to deliver more homes, more housing choice, in suburbs right across the Gold Coast, and more much needed industrial land for the jobs and economy of the future,” he said.
“There is also a rare opportunity to restore some areas of the land — which has been
farmland for generations — to green space, waterways and environmental corridors.”
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Originally published as First look: Norwell Valley canefields to become 40,000 home lakeside suburb
