4 minute read
New Beerwah development in detail
Beerwah Homemaker Centre in detail
By Greg Brown
GC&M News last week reported on a massive new development proposal for the south-eastern corner of Steve Irwin Way and Roys Road in Beerwah.
The proposal – by Coles Group Property Developments Ltd – includes a full-line Coles supermarket, a petrol station, a fast food outlet and drive through, a retail showroom, significant car parking and plans for extensions to include a hardware/nursery, gym, bulky goods homemaker centre and a zone for service/light industry development.
The planned timeframe to opening is ambitiously given as 2021.
If approved, the Beerwah Homemaker Centre (as it will be called) could see a significant shift in the retail and commercial balance of Beerwah.
The existing Sunshine Coast town plan shows the central business district of the town based around the Simpson Street/Peachester Road precinct. Sunshine Coast Council has spent more than $5 million improving the town centre to reflect this.
The land in question is currently zoned for medium impact industrial use, which is the same as the land around Moroney Place and Biondi Crescent. There is a limited supply of land zoned for this purpose in Beerwah and surrounding towns.
They state that the existing commercial precinct in Beerwah “… is stunted in a major redevelopment sense by small allotment sizes in different ownerships. Any opportunity for major redevelopment within the existing centre would involve amalgamation of numerous smaller land parcels, from multiple owners and redevelopment of existing built structures”.
Consequently, the developers insist that the council change the town plan to rezone the 16- plus hectares of land to the specialised centre zoning. This change of zoning would likely allow any subsequent applications to be code assessable and not subject to public notice or community consultation and submission requirements.
As the application has been made by the development arm of Wesfarmers, which part owns Coles, it is expected that the supermarket will be a Coles. The main planning document does not specifically say what businesses will take up the other spaces for the petrol station, showroom and fast food outlet with drive through.
As for the future plans for a hardware/nursery centre … one can only guess but Wesfarmers owns Bunnings.
The Coles planned is 3,768m 2 in size, which is about the same space as the Beerwah Woolworths. It would have 212 car parking spaces, which is about half that in the Woolworths side of the Beerwah Marketplace.
The region is currently fairly well served in regards to grocery shopping, with Aldi, Woolworths and Fresh & Save in Beerwah, IGA in Landsborough, Glass House Mountains and Mooloolah, Coles Express at Wild Horse Mountain, Food Works at Glenview and Supa IGA and Woolworths in Maleny. A new Woolworths has also been approved for land near the Big Fish Tavern at Elimbah. The nearest Coles supermarkets are at Sippy Downs, Caloundra and Caboolture.
An economic needs and impact assessment report submitted as part of the current application makes an analysis of current spending patterns, total spending budget and market share.
The report uses figures for the average local household expenditure on retail goods, with a yearly supermarket total spend calculated at $114.77 million.
The consultants anticipate that Coles will capture 21.4% of the total supermarket spend locally – an amount they say adds up to $38.02 million in 2021, $18.24 million of which will be taken from the trade at Woolworths, Aldi and Fresh & Save in Beerwah.
The consultants conclude that the “… scale of trading impacts across the centres network is not unreasonable and no centre is expected to see trading performance reduced by such levels that their viability will be threatened”.
The economic report also looks at the operational employment impacts, with an estimated 150 supermarket workers, 20 food outlet workers and 10 retail showroom workers, totalling 180 staff at the supermarket, petrol station and fast food outlet.
Once the full Beerwah Homemaker Centre is operational, estimates are for 350 staff (150 supermarket, 20 food outlet, 150 retail showrooms and 30 complementary and ancillary uses).
The report does not indicate how many are fulltime roles and how many are part-time jobs.
The report also proclaims that there is a community need for this development, suggesting local residents are “deprived” of choice and that Coles shoppers have to travel significant distances to shop exclusively at Coles.
As part of the planning process, Coles Group Property Developments will be required to cover the costs of an independent consultant appointed by the council to fact check the developer's assertions and financial assumptions.
Another significant impact of the development will be on the road network, particularly Roys Road and Steve Irwin Way.
The entire development proposal provides three separate site access points - two off Roys Road and one from Steve Irwin Way - and changes to the intersection of Roys Road and Steve Irwin Way, plus changes to the Moroney Place intersection.
The primary access to the petrol station, fast food outlet and the supermarket would be a new culde-sac into the site about 150m east of the Steve Irwin Way intersection and 80m past the Moroney Place corner. This is well short of council's design guidelines, which require a 300m distance from a sub-arterial road intersection.
For a number of reasons, traffic engineers suggest that the inconsistency is appropriate in this circumstance.
A new left turn in/left turn out access off Steve Irwin Way is also proposed. It would include a 120m left turning lane, ostensibly a third lane on Steve Irwin Way after the traffic lights travelling south.
A future access road further east along Roys Road is also indicated in the planning. The engineers suggest that as a result, the Moroney Place corner could be changed to a left in/left out only intersection, meaning all traffic leaving Moroney Place would be directed east along Roys Road away from Steve Irwin Way.
Next week, we will report on what some of the local residents, business owners and politicians think of the development proposal.
