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About Kooky and Shaka →A masterplan for the former Toombul Shopping Centre site at Nundah has been lodged, The Urban Developer reported on 7 October 2026. The applicant is Irvine Group, the Brisbane family developer that agreed to buy the cleared site from Mirvac in November 2025, and the application asks for a preliminary approval: a framework for building the 9.9-hectare site in stages, not permission to start a building.
The site has been empty of shoppers since the flood of February 2022. What the documents describe, according to The Urban Developer's reading of them, is a mixed-use precinct that brings shops back first, adds homes later and puts development on raised platforms. InDaily Queensland, which covered the plan on 9 October 2026, described it as a multi-year project to be delivered in stages.
Figures from the lodged masterplan as reported by The Urban Developer, 7 October 2026.
What the application asks for
The Urban Developer reports that the application is code-assessable and seeks a preliminary approval for an overarching framework to guide staged development. The masterplan was prepared by the planning consultancy Urbis with the design firm Buchan, the only two consultants the report names, and the documents set out the ambition in one line: to reclaim Toombul as the heart of the north.
Two details in that description shape everything else. First, the application does not ask to vary Brisbane City Plan 2014. It works inside the rules that already apply to the land, which The Urban Developer gives as City Plan 2014 and the Toombul-Nundah neighbourhood plan. Second, it is a framework and not a design. Building designs, the residential, retail and commercial yields and the basement parking capacities are left to later development applications, adapted stage by stage to market demand, the report says.
Related readBuild-to-rent in Queensland: what it is, who builds it, how it is taxedIrvine Group's chief executive, Michael Irvine, called the lodgement "an early but important first planning step" in comments reported by The Urban Developer. The same report says the group's focus is to bring retail back first, as the anchor for the rest of the precinct.
The two outlets differ on one small measurement. The Urban Developer places the site about 7 kilometres north of the Brisbane CBD, while InDaily Queensland puts it 8 kilometres away. InDaily also lists the neighbouring suburbs the precinct connects to: Nundah, Clayfield, Kalinga, Hendra and Northgate.
Five footprints and 14 land uses
The masterplan divides the site into five primary development footprints, including sites for midrise residential buildings, according to The Urban Developer. Its report describes four of the areas in detail, and each has a different job.
| Area | Where | Intended role |
|---|---|---|
| Retail core | Centre of the site | Fresh food markets, specialty shops and everyday conveniences. The largest footprint. |
| Grace Street edge | Northern frontage | Fine-grain, subtropical housing as a transition to the neighbouring streets. |
| Eastern hub | Eastern side | Higher-density apartments connected to open space. |
| Kedron Brook corridor | Southern boundary | Two-tiered open space: public parkland that also carries and stores floodwater. |
Source: masterplan documents as reported by The Urban Developer, 7 October 2026. The report gives five footprints in total and details these four areas.
The retail core is meant to restore Toombul's role as a sub-regional economic hub, in The Urban Developer's words. Around it, the masterplan lists 14 land uses. Those named by The Urban Developer include centre activities, multiple dwellings, retirement and residential care, rooming accommodation, a hotel and bar, showrooms, a service station, a car wash, a garden centre, a market, and hardware and trade supplies. In plainer terms, the report describes a mix of retail, offices, apartments, hospitality, entertainment, community facilities and parkland.
InDaily Queensland's account adds the public-facing aims: a retail and dining destination, new public spaces and landscaped areas, integrated public transport connections and a precinct that is easier to walk through than the centre it replaces.
Height limits stay where they are
Because no variation to City Plan 2014 is sought, the height limits are the existing ones. The Urban Developer reports that the controls allow 8 to 12 storeys, stepping down from 12 storeys along Sandgate Road to 8 storeys towards the eastern, suburban edge of the site.
Related readBundaberg gets $52 million for roads and pipes ahead of 4,700 homesThat is worth setting against what is proposed for the Nundah centre next door. Brisbane City Council has a separate proposal, its tailored amendment package for Indooroopilly, Carindale and Nundah, which as advertised would lift the maximum height in Nundah's Major Centre zone east of Sandgate Road from 12 to 15 storeys and allow up to 10 storeys in selected Mixed use areas west of the railway line. Council's page on the package says public consultation ran from 24 April to 25 May 2026 and that the Queensland Government will now review the proposed amendment, which may still change. The same page states that the Toombul major centre is not affected by it.
So the Toombul masterplan is not riding on a planning change: its limits are the ones already in the scheme.
A design that starts with the flood
The documents are direct about the site's main problem. Flooding, they say, is the principal physical constraint and has been a central consideration, in the passage quoted by The Urban Developer. The original centre had been inundated multiple times before 2022, the same report says. It was built on the floodplain of Kedron Brook and was hit in the January 2011 Brisbane floods, according to realcommercial.
The answer in the masterplan has two parts. Bulk earthworks would create raised development platforms, with levels modelled to give structural immunity against a one-in-2,000-year flood under current climate conditions, The Urban Developer reports. Along the southern boundary, the Kedron Brook corridor would do double duty as parkland and as space for floodwater to move through and be held. InDaily Queensland reports that the project is working with Council and with flood engineering specialists on a flood-resilient design.
Related readBuying off the plan in Queensland: deposits, disclosure and sunset clausesUnder City Plan 2014, flood risk is handled through the flood overlay. Council's fact sheet on its flood planning provisions explains that land affected by river or creek flooding is sorted into five flood planning areas. In the first, flooding is very likely or the water very deep or fast, and the land is generally best suited to environmental and recreation uses. In the fifth, there is no recent flood history but some potential for flooding. Requirements for new development ease from one end of that scale to the other, and the fact sheet notes that the rules apply to new development only, not to existing buildings.
The reports on the masterplan do not say which flood planning areas cover the Toombul site.
From 1967 to an empty site
Toombul opened in 1967 and is described by The Urban Developer as Queensland's first modern shopping centre. Mirvac bought it in May 2016, according to Property Markets News. Realcommercial describes the centre Mirvac acquired as having a site area of about 98,850 square metres, anchored by Coles, Kmart, Aldi and BCC Cinemas. That area is 9.885 hectares, which rounds to the 9.9 hectares in the new masterplan.
The flood of February 2022 ended the centre's trading life, and the rest followed over nearly four years.
- February 2022The centre is severely damaged in the Brisbane floods and closes.
- May 2022Mirvac decides to close the centre permanently and end all leases.
- February 2025Demolition is complete. Mirvac says it will look for redevelopment partners.
- November 2025Mirvac and Irvine Group exchange contracts for the whole site.
- October 2026Irvine Group's masterplan is reported lodged.
The May 2022 decision was reported by Property Markets News on 19 May 2022, which reported a Mirvac spokesperson saying it was impractical to reinstate the centre as it had been before the flood damage. The Toombul Renewal project site, set up for the redevelopment, records that Mirvac judged a rebuild not practicable given the damage and the increased risk of another flood, and that demolition finished in February 2025.
Related readRoads and sewers funded for 3,270 homes in Central Queensland and BundabergMirvac's media release of 12 November 2025 announced the sale. It said the company had told the community in February 2025 that it would seek partners because of the site's scale and the remediation required, and that the exchange of contracts followed several months of discussions. The price was not given. The release also said Mirvac and Council had reached agreement on traffic, building heights and the flood solution, and that Council had given in-principle support to a draft masterplan.
Irvine Property Group, the release said, was founded by Balfour and Nicola Irvine and has more than 30 years of experience in south-east Queensland, with earlier urban renewal projects in Teneriffe, Newstead, Bulimba and Morningside.
What a preliminary approval does and does not settle
The Queensland Government's planning website separates two kinds of development approval. A preliminary approval, it says, approves the development but does not authorise it to go ahead. A development permit is the approval that allows development to proceed, with or without conditions. The Toombul application asks for the first kind, and on The Urban Developer's account of the documents it leaves the buildings themselves to later applications.
The same website explains that the State sets the categories of development that councils apply: prohibited, accepted and assessable, with assessable development split into code assessable and impact assessable. The rules for deciding an application differ between the two, it says. The Urban Developer reports that the Toombul application is in the code-assessable group.
The website also describes the process development applications follow under the Development Assessment Rules. It has five key parts: application, referral, information request, public notification and decision. The site notes that not every step applies to every application and that the parts vary with the application type. The reports on the masterplan do not say which parts apply to this one.
A third kind of decision is not in play. A variation approval, the State's website says, varies the local categorising instrument, which in Brisbane is the planning scheme. The Urban Developer quotes the documents as saying the application does not seek to vary the provisions that apply to the site under City Plan 2014, so the existing 8 to 12 storey limits and the neighbourhood plan remain the yardstick.
No home count, tower count or retail floor area has been published
The masterplan sets footprints, uses and height limits only. The Urban Developer reports that yields and parking numbers will come with later applications, so any figure for homes or shops on the site is, for now, a guess.
What happens next
The next dated step is the first detailed application. The Urban Developer reports that one for the retail core is expected early in 2027. Stage one covers that retail core and the parkland, which the documents present as the catalyst for the rest of the precinct.
That order matches what was said when contracts were exchanged. In Mirvac's November 2025 release, Michael Irvine said the priority was a new shopping centre as the first stage of a retail-led mixed-use development. The release listed a first development application for a new retail centre and housing among the next steps, and said any application would be assessed against the Brisbane planning scheme and go through community consultation.
For the suburbs around the site, three things are still to come before the picture is complete: a decision on the framework, the detailed retail application with its floor areas and parking, and the later residential applications that will finally put a number on the homes. None of those has a published date beyond early 2027 for the second.
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.
