Bowen Hills moves on up with 30-storey towers

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This was published 12 years ago

Bowen Hills moves on up with 30-storey towers

By Marissa Calligeros

Towers of up to 30 storeys high will soon start being built in Bowen Hills as developers snap up land in Brisbane's booming inner-north.

But ailing confidence in the property market has one company struggling to secure pre-commitment commercial sales vital to the commencement of construction.

Seymour Group is the latest Brisbane developer to outline its plans for a parcel of land in Bowen Hills, Brisbane's newest Urban Development Area.

The company has lodged an application with the Urban Land Development Authority to build a 22-storey office tower alongside the Bowen Hills train station.

The highrise could be one of several new transit-oriented developments for the suburb, heralding a new upmarket era for the traditionally commercial and industrial area.

Metro Property Group, headed by property baron David Devine, has also turned its attention to Bowen Hills announcing last month it had sold all 195 units in The Chelsea, on Hamilton and Tufton streets, since the project's launch last November.

Metro Property Group has been given the green light for another two apartment towers of 24 and 30 storeys in the suburb.

The developer's 24-storey tower on Mayne Road, which will protrude over the Edgar Street laneway, includes 242 apartments in total.

Although the taller tower, The Madison on Campbell Street, exceeds the ULDA's 24-storey general height limit in the precinct, the body's design panel said the additional storeys made the tower appear more "slender".

The ground level includes space for five boutique retail stores and food outlets and the tower is designed to house 286 apartments.

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Meanwhile, Seymour Group's project will be the amalgamation of three existing lots from 58 to 66 Abbotsford Road.

The proposal includes a 16-storey commercial building on a five-storey podium and a new entry to Bowen Hills train station.

The ground level will include retail space with an optional indoor sports area.

The application comes nearly one year after the developer abandoned its plans for the old Milton Tennis Centre when Brisbane City Council unexpectedly bought the land to turn it into a park.

However, Seymour's development manager Daniel Farquhar said the Bowen Hills project would remain on the drawing board as long as the company continued to struggle to secure a major tenant for the site.

"We haven't pre-committed any tenants there and you definitely need to pre-commit tenants in Brisbane," he said.

"We're trying to get pre-commitments now ... but we're coming out of a global financial crisis so it will take some time for momentum to pick up.

"We're focused on preparing and positioning the property for the time when we have tenants."

Mr Farquhar said more transit-oriented developments (TODs) would follow the train line to the city's north.

"TODs will be successful even though they have been slow to start in Brisbane," he said.

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The 108-hectare parcel of land at Bowen Hill centred around the train station and busway was declared a UDA site in 2008 with the accommodating 30,000 Queenslanders in high density development in the inner-city.

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