The Property Council has provided a submission on Brisbane City Council’s draft City Centre Neighbourhood Plan.
For Brisbane to achieve the economic outcomes established in the Brisbane 2022 New World City Action Plan, the CBD must be able to respond to the demand for office, retail, residential and hotel space.
This means the planning framework needs to provide certainty along with flexibility, to enable the property industry to develop world class facilities that promote Brisbane as ‘Australia’s new world city’.
The Property Council congratulated Council on their efforts to simplify the planning scheme for the CBD by reducing the number of precincts from 18 to 5, reducing tower setbacks, the removal of GFA restrictions, and the assessment of buildings based on how they respond to individual site constraints through an urban context report rather than prescriptive requirements.
The submission outlines our concerns and provides the following recommendations:
- Increase the maximum tower site cover for both non-residential and residential development to 50 per cent, or 55 per cent when utilising transferable site area, on sites with a primary street frontage of more than 20 metres.
- Amend the definition of tower site cover so that it is calculated as the average area of the 20 largest levels.
- Develop a plan that facilitates greater alternative uses of TSAs.
- Remove the maximum 60 metre height limit for any tower in the ‘mall tower area’ within the retail precinct.
- Place greater emphasis on building design through an urban context report for sites fronting the Queen Street Mall.