What it takes to build a town centre for the growing Yarrabilba community

The roadmap for creating a vibrant town centre for our Yarrabilba community requires careful planning, stakeholder engagement, and a significant investment of time and resources. Let’s take a look at the building blocks required to bring our community’s town centre to life!

From developing a vision to building the infrastructure, there are several steps involved to pave the path for Yarrabilba’s future town centre.

We sat down with the Lendlease development team to uncover the inner workings of building a town centre from the ground up.

“The first step in creating a town centre is to establish a vision for what the area will look like and how it will function. This involves consulting with local stakeholders to identify their needs and priorities,” said Senior Development Manager, Andrew Erzetich.

“Once the vision has been established, the next step is to create a masterplan that outlines the layout of the town centre. We need to consider the location of buildings, how street networks work with shared access, how public spaces are integrated and compliment surrounding buildings whilst looking for practicalities and placemaking success.

“To incorporate the Indigenous heritage of the site, Lendlease worked closely with Jabree, the cultural heritage body for Yarrabilba as part of the Town Centre masterplanning.”

The masterplan work is just one element of designing and building a town centre. There is a rigorous 6-step planning process in which all applications need to be approved through Economic Development Queensland.

The planning process for Yarrabilba’s future town centre requires involvement at both a local and state government level with regular consultation to ensure their needs and obligations are being addressed.

Lendlease Assistant Development Manager Jedda David said building the necessary infrastructure in and around the future town centre site is another crucial step.

“This infrastructure includes constructing roads, sidewalks, and other transportation infrastructure, as well as utilities such as water, sewerage, electricity, and telecommunications. In addition, the town centre may require the construction of public amenities such as parks, plazas, and community centres,” said Jedda.

“In addition, it is crucial for the ongoing success of future tenants and occupiers of the town centre, that Yarrabilba and its broader catchment has reached a level of maturity and catchment population so that these businesses are sustainable and set for success.”

To support the needs of our growing community, Lendlease has already delivered a District Scale Retail and Neighbourhood Retail Centres within the project. The Town Centre is the next step in the evolution of population serving amenity for Yarrabilba and the wider catchment area.

To learn more about the future vision of Yarrabilba, click here.