Developer to build suburbs in mine towns

PROPERTY group Mirvac plans to boost its exposure in Queensland's booming mining districts.

Avoca Resources

PROPERTY group Mirvac plans to boost its exposure in Queensland's booming mining districts.

Managing director Nick Collishaw said as housing markets in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne slowed, Mirvac was looking to mining areas in Queensland and Western Australia for future growth.

He said the company was in talks with coal and liquefied natural gas producers and councils in Queensland.

In Western Australia, Mirvac was named the preferred developer of the city centre of Karratha, the biggest town in the iron-ore rich Pilbara region, in November in a joint venture with the local land authority.

The $1.5 billion project, which will create a new suburb, Mulataga, will accommodate as many as 8000 people.

"What's been happening in the Pilbara and north of Queensland so far has been one-off, ad hoc projects,'' he said.

"`The debate going on right now, in the resource centres and councils, is this is no longer boom-bust style development.

"We're now putting together the infrastructure, the cultural facilities you expect to see in the suburb of a city.''

The talks, about housing the construction workers for plants and pipelines being built will be followed in about three to five years by discussions about longer-term, master-planned communities, he said.

The population of Western Australia jumped 14.3 per cent in the five years to 2011, while Queensland's rose 11 per cent, census figures released last week showed.