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About Kooky and Shaka →A 6.1 hectare stretch of Brisbane riverfront at Northshore Hamilton has been divided among five developers who between them plan nearly 2,200 homes. Economic Development Queensland announced the selection on Sunday 6 September, at the end of a market process that drew 18 submissions across the five sites.
The agency says construction of the first homes is expected to begin in mid-2028 and that the first residents are anticipated from 2031, subject to planning approvals.
Source: Economic Development Queensland and Queensland Government media statement, 6 September 2026.
Who is building what
Each parcel went to a different company, with a different mix of buildings. All five are Queensland-based, the agency says.
| Developer | Homes | Proposal |
|---|---|---|
| Lancini | About 484 | Homes above a 15,070 sqm shopping hub with supermarket, medical, childcare and community uses |
| Red & Co | About 440 | Two towers, staged, with specialty retail |
| GRAYA | About 435 | Mixed use, with a hotel and retail |
| Joe Adsett Developments | About 430 | Two towers, staged, with retail and commercial space |
| Greyburn | About 402 | Four medium-rise buildings with ground-floor retail |
Source: Economic Development Queensland, 6 September 2026. The five figures add up to about 2,191 homes.
The parcels are close to each other in size of program. The smallest proposal is about 402 homes and the largest about 484, so no single developer carries much more than a fifth of the precinct. The average is about 438 homes a parcel.
Across the site the agency counts more than 21,600 square metres of retail and commercial space and a 50-bed hotel. The homes are to be a mix of one, two, three and four-bedroom apartments, and the agency estimates the precinct will house approximately 4,000 people. That works out at a little under two residents per home, a ratio that fits an apartment precinct with a large share of one and two-bedroom dwellings.
The retail is concentrated. Lancini's shopping and lifestyle hub, at 15,070 square metres, is about 70 per cent of all the retail and commercial floor space announced. The agency describes it as the community heart of the neighbourhood, anchored by a full-line supermarket, with potential medical, childcare, education and business uses around it. The remaining 6,500 square metres or so is spread across the other four projects as ground-floor shops, dining and commercial tenancies.
Related readInfrastructure charges in Queensland: who pays for the roads and pipesAt about 2,191 homes on 6.1 hectares, the plans average close to 360 homes per hectare, before any land is set aside for streets and public space.
What the State is putting in
Northshore Hamilton is a Priority Development Area, which means Economic Development Queensland, and not Brisbane City Council, sets the planning rules and assesses applications there. The agency also owns the land being released.
It says the Queensland Government is spending $154 million through the agency on enabling infrastructure to prepare the site. The Government's media statement of the same day lists roads, sewer and water among the works. The agency says the investment supports the start of construction from 2028.
Set against the homes planned, $154 million is roughly $70,000 of public infrastructure for each of the 2,191 dwellings. That is a simple division for scale. The retail, the hotel and the public spaces would share the same infrastructure, and the announcement does not say how much of the cost is to be recovered from the developers through land payments or charges. The agency maintains a Development Charges and Offset Plan for the area, updated in July 2026, which sets out how charges for trunk infrastructure are calculated.
The sum is large by the agency's own yardstick. In its results for 2025-26, published on 24 August, Economic Development Queensland reported $568 million of infrastructure investment delivered across all Priority Development Areas in the year. The Northshore works are a multi-year commitment and the two figures are not directly comparable, but they show the weight the State is placing on this one site.
Related readLakesview at Robina wins State approval for 2,500 Gold Coast homesHow the site came to market
The Northshore Hamilton Priority Development Area was declared on 27 March 2008. It covers 304 hectares of former industrial land beside the suburb of Hamilton, with more than three kilometres of frontage to the Brisbane River, and sits close to Brisbane Airport and the Australia TradeCoast employment area.
Two decisions brought these five parcels forward. The first was a change of plan for the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Northshore Hamilton had been the intended location of the Brisbane athletes' village. On 11 August 2025 the Queensland Government announced early works to turn the Brisbane Showgrounds in Bowen Hills into the village, which is to house more than 10,000 athletes and officials during the Olympic Games. The agency says that relocation allowed it to bring forward housing at Northshore ahead of the Games.
The second was a change to the rules. An amendment to the area's development scheme was open for public comment from 7 August to 19 September 2025 and took effect on 21 November 2025. The agency says the five sites were released after those changes, which it credits with accelerating housing delivery across the precinct.
The market campaign ran for eight weeks, according to the Government's statement, and produced 18 proposals for five sites, an average of between three and four bidders for each parcel. Business News Australia, reporting the selection on 6 September, said the wider Northshore precinct is expected to contribute more than $14 billion to the Queensland economy over its life.
- 27 March 2008Northshore Hamilton is declared a Priority Development Area of 304 hectares.
- 21 November 2025An amended development scheme takes effect after public notification.
- 6 September 2026Five development partners are announced for the 6.1 hectare site.
- Mid-2028Construction of the first homes is expected to begin, subject to approvals.
- 2031The first residents are anticipated to move in.
Five builders instead of one
Splitting the site five ways is a choice with consequences. Five developers bring five sets of finance, five design teams and five sales programs, so the precinct does not depend on any one company's project going ahead. The shared works, in turn, fall to the agency and its $154 million.
Related readLargest builders started 41 per cent of Queensland's new homesThe State has taken the other route elsewhere this year. At Montague Road in South Brisbane, a 7.1 hectare riverfront precinct of similar size, Economic Development Queensland said on 25 June that a single proponent, Lendlease, had been selected for 4,034 homes, with a first stage of 796 due by 2031. Northshore Hamilton spreads roughly half that number of homes across five companies.
It also changes what ends up on the ground. The proposals range from four medium-rise buildings to paired towers, and the largest single element of retail sits with one parcel. The agency's own description of the outcome is a mixed-use precinct where people can live and work close to the river.
One of the five is already working with the State on another site. Red and Co Developments was named on 22 July as the builder of the market housing on a 1.1 hectare parcel of surplus government land at Varsity Lakes on the Gold Coast, part of a 270-home project announced by the Queensland Government under its Land Activation Program.
For the agency, the selection adds to a pipeline it has been reporting on closely. Its 2025-26 results counted 1,800 homes contracted on land it owns and 1,499 homes commenced. Five agreements for about 2,191 homes on a single site would exceed a full year of contracting at that rate, once they are signed.
The dates to keep in mind
The timeline is long. On the agency's own dates, construction starts in a little under two years and the first resident arrives about three years after that. Between now and mid-2028 each developer needs a development approval and the finance to build, and the enabling works have to be finished.
The approvals will be decided by the agency itself, as the planning authority for the area. Its results for 2025-26 give an indication of pace: it reported that more than 94 per cent of applications in Priority Development Areas were decided within 40 business days, following changes to its assessment process in November 2025, and that it approved 14,687 homes across those areas in the year.
The agency presents the precinct as part of the lead-up to the Brisbane 2032 Games. That is context for the timing, since first residents in 2031 would put homes on the site before the Games begin.
Two of the five projects are described as staged, with two towers each, which means the last homes on those parcels will follow the first by some years. The announcement gives no completion date for the precinct as a whole.
None of the five proposals is approved yet, and the home numbers are approximate. What changed on 6 September is that a large, serviced, State-owned riverfront site now has a named developer attached to every parcel.
For buyers, nothing is for sale. For the inner north-east of Brisbane, the announcement adds a neighbourhood of about 4,000 people to the map, with a shopping centre of its own, on land that has been in the State's development area for eighteen years.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
