A redevelopment of the flood-ravaged Toombul Shopping Centre site will capitalise on its proximity to the Brisbane CBD, airport and transport links, business and marketing leaders say.
Owner Mirvac announced on yesterday that it would be terminating retail leases at the north Brisbane retail centre after flooding in late February causing extensive damage.
In a statement, the developer said it had "undertaken extensive assessments to understand the full impact of the flood damage at Toombul shopping centre".
"After taking into account the current and potential future impacts of flooding on the site, it is impractical and undesirable to reinstate the centre to how it was prior to the flooding damage," the statement said.
Change inevitable, consultant says
CM Ink director Catherine Michael said the decision to close the 54-year-old centre was "always coming".
The marketing consultant said the value of the site and the age of the shopping centre meant Mirvac could benefit greatly from its redevelopment.
"Mirvac paid $228 million for that site in 2016, and the valuations of a lot of shopping centres spaces and those kind of sites have gone through the roof, even with COVID and people not going inside centres as much," Ms Michael said.
"It's one of those centres – it's not a Chermside, which has the car parks, has everything that opens and shuts – it was easy to get into and out of, close to a train station and buses.
"It's well located and has those [transport] feeders into there."
But retailers requiring large geographical footprints like Bunnings would probably not be eyeing the location, Ms Michael said.
She said those businesses would have already mapped out their ideal sites.
Ms Michael said combining retail and residential could be an option.
"They will be looking at what's the best use for that location for shareholders — but that community now with property prices, it's not an outer suburb," she said.
"Nundah isn't that far from the city, it's not far from the airport, it's got good feeder links with rail and buses.
"They'll look to do something quite clever and offer something that [Westfield] Chermside isn't.
"We've become highly dependent on cars, so parking is critical."
Brisbane North Chamber of Commerce president Simon Penrose said he expected a multi-use development.
"There may still be a lot of retail, but a lot of places are going for residential as well," he said.
Businesses to find new homes
Many businesses that were located at Toombul would have to "start all over again from scratch", Mr Penrose said.
While there were vacant shops in the adjacent suburbs of Nundah, Stafford and Lutwyche, he said many residents would be inconvenienced because the Toombul centre was "a hub of the local area".
"It was one of the only shopping centres which had a lot of banks in there," he said.
"A lot of [the shoppers] will be going across to Chermside — that was evidenced the last couple of weekends when it took an hour to get out of the shopping centre."
Some retailers had already moved to new locations after the centre closed.
Toombul Barber is now in Ascot, Ed's PCs in Taigum, Home & Her is in Nundah and the Function Well gym is operating in Newstead.
New design should be flood-proof
Mr Penrose and Ms Michael also agreed that whatever was planned for the Toombul site would need to be heavily flood-proofed.
Mr Penrose said shopping centres in Gympie were now built up high, with the first two levels being car parks.
Ms Michael said using the model of old Queenslander homes, which were also built high off the ground, would be wise.
"Things could go underneath them, you could hose them out — that flipping of things that require rent, trading, customers, safety, really good sanitation [and which] need to be up high in these flood zones," she said.
"Retail provides a lot of that community — people do their walking and meet for a coffee there, it's knowing when a JP would be there, it's the newsagent, it's the daily things people would require regularly in their weeks."
On the other side of Brisbane, Bunnings regional operations manager Jason Doyle confirmed the Oxley hardware store would remain closed while "redevelopment opportunities, including flood-proof design concepts" were explored.
But he said Bunnings would reopen its flood-hit Rocklea store by mid-June.
"For now, our Oxley team will continue to work at and support their nearby stores, as they have been over the past two-and-a-half months," Mr Doyle said.
"We'll continue to keep the local community updated as our plans for reopening the Rocklea store progress, and once we have further updates for our Oxley store."
